Barbara McQuade: ‘I Don’t Think It’s Very Likely’ That the Trump Administration’s Appeal Will Succeed in the Ballroom Case

RUSH EXCERPT:

MCQUADE: “I don’t think it’s very likely, Jonathan. I mean, what we’ve seen here is President Trump go it alone, raise private funds to alter the White House. And the plaintiff in this case is the national trust for historic preservation. This is an organization chartered by Congress that is supposed to oversee and approve any changes to historic buildings. There’s also the problem with using private funds for public works project. You know, if you could, you know, law professors love to take a hypothetical to its extreme. What if the president say, completely tore down the White House and said, I’m going to put up some mod building there in its place? I think then we would see how ridiculous it is that he even tore down the east wing to replace it with this grand ballroom. If that’s to be decided, it’s Congress who gets to decide that, as guided by the national trust for historic preservation, the reason the judge is so angry about what happened here is he already ordered a halt of the construction, but he allowed a limited exception as needed for national security reasons, because the Trump Administration has represented that they’re building a new, larger command center and underground bunker under the new ballroom. They just kept building and saying, well, we need this ballroom and we’re going to bulletproof glass and all these other kinds of things. And he said, no, no, no. Let me be very clear. You can continue”