President Donald Trump has completely turned his rationale for the White House ballroom project on its head, intending to "blackmail" the U.S. Supreme Court into allowing it, attorney and writer Ankush Khardori told Glenn Kirschner on his web show.
A federal court has blocked construction on the ballroom project. Trump is appealing that decision, arguing it is a vital project for national security.
"They have totally flipped the rationale on its head," said Khardori.
From the outset of the project and months after, he noted, Trump "was very open about why he was doing this — he wanted a fancier event space because he thought it was beneath the office to have tents when they were hosting state dinners."
Now, instead, he's describing it as "an integrated military complex" and got FBI Director Kash Patel, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, and Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton to all vouch for this.
This isn't just Trump changing his position on the fly, though, Khardori said — it's a "blackmail" scheme against the Supreme Court.
"The reason I described it as blackmail is that it reminded me of exactly what the administration did in the tariff litigation," said Khardori. In that case, he also got a handful of advisers, "Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick," to "put on all these affidavits in the courts below saying that if you invalidate Trump's emergency tariffs, it's going to cause basically a global meltdown."
They even described that as a national security threat as well, and claimed a number of resolved wars might restart, said Khardori — none of which ultimately happened.
"It was really bad, and it was really transparent what they were doing," Khardori said. However, in that case, "everybody ignored them — the lower courts ignored it, the Supreme Court didn't give it much thought, and of course Trump lost that case. The world did not come crashing down. The global order is still such as it is. And the global doom predictions were promptly forgotten, which highlights the frivolity of these claims in the first instance."
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