Inset: Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Leon (U.S. District Court). Background: President Donald Trump listens during a ceremonial swearing-in of Paul Atkins as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, in the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
Just days before his appeal will be heard, President Donald Trump launched a personal attack on a federal judge who has repeatedly frustrated him in court, declaring that the jurist "will be held responsible" for the "Death and Destruction" of the nation as a result of not having a ballroom at the White House with a "DronePort" and other security features.
The president has stewed for some time that Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in April found that the National Trust for Historic Preservation had standing to sue and block the administration from turning East Wing rubble into a more than $400 million ballroom. The administration has insisted that assassination attempts on Trump mean the security fixtures underlying the would-be ballroom must "immediately" be built — or else the "lives of all Presidents, current and future" will be "greatly endanger[ed]."
On Sunday, Trump posted a reaction that broadly reflected the concerns the DOJ raised in court but that also went after Leon by name and mocked Alison Hoagland, the architectural historian whose aesthetic injury claim the judge accepted in the early stages of the case.
"The DronePort at the White House Ballroom will be, perhaps, the most sophisticated anywhere in the World! It will safeguard our Nation's Capital, Washington, D.C., long into the future. Judge Richard Leon should stop playing games with America's Security! If anything happens, he will be held responsible for the Death and Destruction caused to our Country," the president posted, indicating unspecified consequences should he not get his way in court. "He has already created enough problems by allowing 'Top Secret' information to be released and exposed based on a ridiculous lawsuit started by a highly litigious woman (serial plaintiff!) whose 'strolling,' in her opinion, will be disturbed by the new, desperately needed structure – In any event, a woman who has absolutely no STANDING! With the advent of highly sophisticated, and powerful, modern day weaponry, we can no longer defend Washington, D.C., with rifles and pistols, alone. This ridiculous lawsuit must be dismissed, IMMEDIATELY!"
The post came days after Trump called out an Obama-appointed judge by name for ordering the administration to remove the president's name from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, as enacted by Congress.
Leon has been a thorn in Trump's side, and not just on the ballroom issue. His colorful, exclamation-point-filled opinions have bedeviled Trump's executive orders against law firms, and put the kibosh on the Pentagon's disciplinary action against Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., for telling troops they "can" and must "disobey illegal orders." The judge was also recently assigned to Jan. 6 cops' lawsuit to stop Trump's $1.776 billion fund for those who participated in the 2021 riot.
On Friday starting at 9:30 a.m., U.S. Circuit Judges Patricia Millett and Bradley Garcia, appointed by Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and U.S. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, will consider whether to overturn Leon's ballroom injunction at the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Rao earlier expressed the view that Hoagland's "generalized aesthetic harms" could not defeat the government's "credible" and "weightier interest."
In the lead-up to oral arguments, the DOJ asserted that Leon's injunction is "many times over" an "abuse of discretion" requiring a resounding reversal.
"Acting at the behest of a single pedestrian who is concerned that she will dislike it, the district court enjoined defendants from continuing a construction project at the White House that is indispensable to national security," the DOJ's brief summarized.
"This should have been an easy call for the district court, a 400 Million Dollar gift, yet it wrongly dismissed these national security concerns and the continuity of government with a, 'Please!'" the brief went on.
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