Dec. 12 (UPI) — The National Trust for Historic Preservation has filed a lawsuit against the President Donald Trump administration to block construction of a ballroom on White House grounds.
The suit claims the ballroom construction is unlawful and asks the court to stop further construction until the plans go through a review process, as required by law.
Former White House attorney under presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Greg Craig, is representing the Trust. Defendants in the suit include the president, the National Park Service, the Department of the Interior, the General Services Administration and their leaders. The lawsuit was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
“No president is legally allowed to tear down portions of the White House without any review whatsoever — not President Trump, not President Biden, not anyone else,” the filing said. “And no president is legally allowed to construct a ballroom on public property without giving the public the opportunity to weigh in. President Trump’s efforts to do so should be immediately halted, and work on the ballroom project should be paused until the defendants complete the required reviews — reviews that should have taken place before the defendants demolished the East Wing, and before they began construction of the ballroom — and secure the necessary approvals.”
Trump initially said the project wouldn’t interfere with the building and would be “near it but not touching it.” But then the East Wing was demolished to make way for the ballroom project. The now-$300 million project is being funded by donors, Trump has said.
The National Trust said it sent a letter to the Park Service, the National Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts in October asking them to stop the demolition and begin review procedures. But it didn’t get a response.
“Yet it appears the site preparation and preliminary construction of the proposed new ballroom is proceeding without any review by either commission or by Congress, and without the necessary approvals,” the suit said. “By evading this required review, the defendants are depriving the public of its right to be informed and its opportunity to comment on the defendants’ proposed plans for the ballroom project.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in October that the president doesn’t need approval for demolition but only needs it for “vertical construction.”
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement Friday: “President Trump has full legal authority to modernize, renovate, and beautify the White House — just like all of his predecessors did.”