The Justice Department has invoked an alleged terror plot targeting a White House UFC event as fresh legal justification for a disputed 90,000-square-foot ballroom construction project.
Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate wrote to the court following the arrest of five men accused of plotting to attack UFC Freedom 250 on the White House lawn.
The suspects allegedly planned to “deploy drones armed with explosives in and around the [UFC] event” to force a mass evacuation of the grounds.
After triggering the evacuation, the alleged plotters then intended to “deploy snipers to fire upon ‘high value targets’ within the fleeing crowd,” according to the letter.
Shumate argued the foiled attack “demonstrates the compelling need for the East Wing Project, with a Ballroom designed to defend against just such attacks.”
The DOJ further contended that major events are currently held in “plastic tents that cannot even protect highly esteemed guests from inclement weather, let alone high caliber bullets or kamikaze drones.”
Critics have pointed out an obvious contradiction, noting the administration enthusiastically planned the UFC event on the very lawn it now claims is dangerously exposed.
The legal argument faces a significant obstacle in Judge Richard Leon, who previously found that no statute “comes close” to giving Trump authority to proceed with a nine-figure project on federal land without congressional approval.
Leon had earlier described the project’s funding mechanism as a “Rube Goldberg contraption” and noted the large construction hole beside the White House was “a problem of the President’s own making.”
The government has repeatedly shifted its rationale for the ballroom, initially arguing Trump needed it because attending events on the White House lawn was too dangerous for the president.
That argument sat awkwardly alongside the administration’s simultaneous planning of an outdoor UFC extravaganza, a tension the DOJ had previously chosen to ignore rather than address.
Legal observers have noted the DOJ’s marquee evidence of unprecedented presidential threat is an operation the FBI Director described as a routine matter for law enforcement.
The ballroom project has drawn sustained scrutiny, with earlier court filings described by commentators as resembling social media posts rather than formal legal submissions.
The core judicial question remains unchanged: whether the executive branch possesses any lawful authority to unilaterally construct the facility without congressional oversight or appropriation.