The Department of the Interior appears to have complied with a judge’s order to remove all tree-cutting equipment from East Potomac Park Golf Course.
Saturday morning, the nation’s capital awoke to news that more than 400 trees — some of them large and healthy — had been cut down by contractors working for Interior, angering the judge overseeing the lawsuit over President Donald Trump’s publicly stated plan to turn the historic public links into what he describes as a championship level course.
At a hearing Monday, Judge Ana Reyes told administration lawyers she was extremely unhappy that the advance notice she’d requested was not made until Friday last week at 4:55 p.m. She ordered work to stop until a hearing Oct. 19 and took the further step of ordering the tree-cutting equipment removed by 8 a.m. Friday.
As of 11 a.m. Friday, crews had not appeared to move the equipment, yet, but it was gone by Friday evening. Piles of logs and brush and felled trees appear to have been pushed toward the middle of the 18-hole public golf course.
Yellow tape around dozens of trees apparently marked for removal prior to the stop-work order is gone, too.
In a memorandum issued Tuesday, Reyes questioned the Department of Interior’s assertion the tree cutting was part of a 2019 plan to restore the course to its original design and not related to President Trump’s publicly announced plans to remake it into what he described as a championship-level course.
“It is a coincidence, the Government seems to suggest, that DOI cut down hundreds of trees at the Course weeks after the President asked DOI to cut down trees at the Course, and not, say, any other time in the last seven years,” Reyes wrote.
“That asks rather a lot of coincidence,” she added.
Reyes told administration attorneys if the stop work order is violated by even two seconds, she’ll begin contempt proceedings.
News4 sends breaking news stories by email. Go here to sign up to get breaking news alerts in your inbox.
