Thwarted attack on UFC fight is another reason to build White House ballroom, Trump DOJ argues

By Devan Cole, CNN

(CNN) — As federal courts have looked skeptically at President Donald Trump’s assertion that he can construct a massive new ballroom at the White House without approval from lawmakers, he’s increasingly pointed to alleged attempts to harm him as a reason why the project should continue apace.

The latest iteration of that argument came late Tuesday when a top political appointee at the Justice Department said a thwarted possible attack on the outdoor UFC fight held at the White House last weekend “demonstrates the compelling need” for the nearly 90,000-square foot event space.

The ballroom’s “mass and height will shield the White House grounds from attack, and give the Secret Service the visibility needed to identify attackers,” Brett Shumate, the head of DOJ’s civil division, told a federal appeals court in a brief letter.

“It will protect the president and guests at major events that are currently held in ‘plastic tents that cannot even protect highly esteemed guests from inclement weather, let alone high caliber bullets or kamikaze drones,’ – exactly the attack that this Sunday’s would-be assassins plotted to launch,” he wrote, referring to temporary structures that have historically been used for large events held on the White House’s South Lawn.

The missive represents the department’s latest bid to use violence in Washington, DC, to buttress its arguments in defense of the project. Earlier this year, a shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and a separate shooting incident near the White House were invoked by the administration as it sought to keep courts in the nation’s capital from frustrating work on the ballroom.

A three-judge panel at the DC Circuit Court of Appeals is poised to decide in coming weeks whether Trump is unlawfully constructing the ballroom, as a lower court in DC concluded this spring. During oral arguments before the panel earlier this month, the two judges who appeared ready to rule against Trump showed no interest in his national security arguments and instead focused largely on whether the law permitted the president to unilaterally carry out the project.

Critics have pointed to the fact that the planned ballroom would not be a substitute for the kinds of recent events where there was a threat to Trump’s life and those of the people around him.

After a suspected gunman showed up to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner – where Trump and a host of other executive branch officials were present – at a hotel in DC in late April, DOJ pointed to the incident in a bid to get US District Judge Richard Leon to undo his ruling that would have halted construction on the ballroom.

They later raised an incident near the White House last month as they reupped that request. In that case, Secret Service officers shot and killed a person who the agency said approached a security checkpoint just outside the White House complex and fired at them.

“When completed, this highly knitted, integrated, and unified project, which is a singular and vital national security facility, will provide a ‘SAFE HAVEN’ from attackers,” Justice Department lawyers wrote on May 24.

Leon, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, has yet to respond to the administration’s ask.

Outside observers pointed out earlier this year that the annual press gala is a private event that’s never held at the White House and that a new ballroom wouldn’t change that reality. Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez noted at the time that Trump’s decision to demolish the East Wing to make room for the ballroom happened long before the incident.

“The idea that they are now trying to change the rationale for this in retrospect doesn’t quite add up,” she told CNN’s Manu Raju in April. “And in fact, the White House long had facilities for hosting, which also included the East Wing.”

For its part, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which is waging the legal challenge to the ballroom project, has pushed back strongly on Trump’s arguments.

The group noted earlier this spring that it takes the president’s safety seriously and that its case wasn’t focused on whether there should be a new ballroom built at the White House, but rather whether Trump could proceed with such a massive change to the presidential residence without congressional approval.

Hitting back on Wednesday, a lawyer for the trust told the DC Circuit that Trump’s “repeated invocations of security risks at hotels, rallies, or mixed-martial-arts events” do not “bear on the equities relevant to this case.”

The UFC fight, the lawyer, Tad Heuer, wrote in court papers, “would not have even fit in the proposed ballroom.” He noted that nothing in Leon’s ruling “limited the security options available to law enforcement” for the event and that Trump, Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson “all attended, with full Secret Service knowledge of the alleged plot that was ‘detected and disrupted’ four days earlier.”

In a stinging decision earlier this year, Leon, too, rejected Trump’s argument that the entire project needed to continue for national security reasons.

He clarified in April that his ruling halting the project excluded work on a highly sophisticated bunker being built under the ballroom, rejecting the White House’s claim that both the underground and above-ground portion of the structure “advances critical national-security objectives as an integrated whole.”

But the DC Circuit put that decision on hold, permitting work to continue for now.

Sunday’s UFC event took place outdoors at a large, temporary event space built on the White House grounds that included a towering, open-air “claw” structure in which the fights unfolded. Officials have said around 100,000 people were expected to gather near the White House for the event, which was held on Trump’s 80th birthday as part of programming for the United States’ 250th anniversary. The event also featured a festival for fans on the Ellipse.

Officials said on Tuesday that multiple people who they claim discussed plans to attack the event were charged in connection with the alleged plot. Authorities say the planned attack allegedly included the use of drones and a gunman. The plans were detected last week.

The planned ballroom, Trump’s attorneys told the appeals court on Tuesday, “will support a highly sophisticated drone port and sniper nests atop the ballroom that would destroy any effort to launch such an attack” in the future.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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CNN’s Holmes Lybrand, Hannah Rabinowitz and Kaanita Iyer contributed to this report.