Follow-up: Judge Grills Government Over East Potomac Park Closure Plan at Daylong Hearing, Ruling Expected Within Days

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes held a daylong hearing on Friday, November 13, on the plan to close East Potomac Park, under which the government would close the entire park south of Buckeye Drive starting Sunday, November 15, including the East Potomac Golf Links, Ohio Drive and Hains Point in Washington, D.C. The judge did not rule from the bench and is expected to decide within days on the plaintiffs' request to temporarily halt the closure.

The plaintiffs, led by the D.C. Preservation League, argue the closure is an unlawful step toward the government's redesign of the golf course and are seeking an order blocking it at least temporarily. In court papers, the government has said the closure is necessary because of safety hazards along a seawall that has been deteriorating for years, and because there will be no one to operate the course starting November 15 after the administration ended its lease with the National Links Trust, the organization that had managed it.

According to courtroom reporting, Reyes repeatedly questioned those reasons. She pointed out that the seawall's safety concerns were first identified more than a decade ago and were not raised in court documents until late last month, and that some 30,000 people had just run a marathon along the park's path without problems. On the operator issue, she said the administration was not responding to a lack of an operator but had created one, comparing it to setting a house on fire and then claiming the insurance proceeds. When Justice Department attorney Adam Gustafson said the administration was entitled to a presumption of regularity, she told him he may want to move on from that point.

Mid-hearing, after Gustafson said the closure would be published as a direct final rule taking effect without the usual public notice and comment period, Reyes halted the proceedings and ordered the Justice Department to produce, by 2:30 p.m., a live human being who understands the law to argue the point, or to tell her it could not do so.

The hearing also touched on a related inquiry into officials' candor. Reyes has said she would appoint Jessie Liu, a former U.S. attorney who served in the first Trump administration, as a special master to investigate whether officials misled her about the president's plans for the course. Government lawyers argued in a filing on Friday that there was no reasonable basis for an ethics inquiry. Reyes closed the hearing by saying that if it is not a special master, it is going to be her. She also warned, in response to whistleblower allegations that officials were destroying documents related to the president's construction projects, that she would start sanctions and contempt proceedings if she learned documents had been intentionally or recklessly destroyed.

In earlier rulings in the same case, Reyes found last month that the administration likely violated environmental law in pursuing its plans for the course and barred further tree removal. Whether Sunday's closure goes ahead now depends on her ruling in the coming days.

(Source: U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia)

Source: U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)

Photo: 图：骑行者在华盛顿 East Potomac 公园的 Ohio Drive 上骑行，该公园与球场同在周日关闭计划范围内。G. Edward Johnson 摄，CC BY 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: Cyclists ride on Ohio Drive in East Potomac Park in Washington, D.C., within the area covered by the planned Sunday closure. By G. Edward Johnson, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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