'Whoa!' Trump official goes 'silent' as judge pulls dictionary to define president's words

Trump administration lawyers refused to answer a federal judge’s questions about President Donald Trump’s plan to close a D.C. golf course, sending her to a dictionary.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes had ordered Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, the Justice Department’s No. 3 official, to appear at Friday’s hearing in Washington after Trump posted that East Potomac Golf Course would close Nov. 15, ABC News reported.

Trump first set that date on Oct. 18, writing on Truth Social that the old course “will be closed to play.” The next day, Woodward told Reyes, “There is no plan to close the course on November 15."

Reyes opened by reading Woodward a professional conduct rule requiring lawyers to be truthful with judges, Law Dork’s Chris Geidner reported on Bluesky.

“Woof,” legal commentator Gabriel Malor reacted on Bluesky as she began.

“Not to my knowledge,” Woodward said when Reyes asked whether anyone at the Justice or Interior departments had made false statements he wanted to correct. Reyes then turned to an Interior Department lawyer she had ordered to attend, according to Law Dork, and his answers sent her to the dictionary.

“What do you mean by ‘involved?’” the lawyer asked when Reyes wanted to know whether Interior Secretary Doug Burgum was involved in the project, MeidasTouch correspondent Scott MacFarlane reported on X.

“Judge is literally getting a dictionary,” MacFarlane wrote.

“This is not going well, folks,” Geidner wrote.

“A plan?” the lawyer replied when Reyes asked when he became aware of a plan to close the course Nov. 15.

The lawyer “has gone silent,” Malor wrote, as Reyes offered to read him the definition of “plan.”

“It sounds like you don’t want him to answer a very straightforward question,” Reyes told Woodward when he tried to halt the questioning, MacFarlane reported.

Reyes then made Woodward read Trump’s posts aloud and pressed him on what they meant.

Trump’s second post, on Oct. 26, said the course would close “as scheduled,” wording that treated the Nov. 15 date as already set.

“What’s a past participle?” Reyes asked Woodward.

“I have no idea,” the Trump official replied.

“That had been the schedule all along, including on Oct 19, when you looked me in the eye and told me there was no plan to close the course on Nov. 15,” Reyes told Woodward. “You’re the 3rd ranking official at DOJ … you’re saying ‘Do not believe the President!’”

“He posted it!” she said of the president's Truth Social proclamation.

Woodward argued Trump’s meaning fell under executive privilege, a protection that usually shields a president’s private communications, according to MacFarlane, who marked the moment with five exclamation points.

“Quite an extraordinary view of executive privilege, but we’ll leave it at that,” Reyes noted.

“We would never violate the court’s order,” Woodward said after huddling with colleagues, telling Reyes the course was “not currently scheduled to close on Nov. 15.” The official compared Trump’s posts to an executive order, which he said does not guarantee action will be carried out.

Asked when the government first took steps to close the course, Woodward said probably not until Oct. 26, then listed the tree cutting among them, saying “All of that plays into the plan."

"Whoa! The removal of the trees was part of a plan to close the course!" the judge then exclaimed.

"That's not what I meant!" Woodward backtracked.

Woodward’s remark that the tree removal “plays into the plan” tracked what the plaintiffs have argued all along, that the cutting cleared the way for Trump’s overhaul. The preservationists and golfers who sued make that same argument in court papers.

“HOLY F—. DOJ previously said the trees were about restoring the 2019 plan,” Malor wrote.