---
title: "Judge Opens Perjury-Adjacent Probe of DOJ Over Trump’s Golf Course"
description: "A $1.7m tree removal, a $20m-$400m price tag nobody will confirm, and a president who kept talking"
author: "Luis Goa"
published: 2026-10-30T19:06:00Z
modified: 2026-10-31T13:14:34Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/judge-opens-perjury-adjacent-probe-of-doj-over-trump-s-golf--b25bc8
language: en
tags: ["trump", "justice", "law", "environment", "politics", "us"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Judge Opens Perjury-Adjacent Probe of DOJ Over Trump’s Golf Course

*A $1.7m tree removal, a $20m-$400m price tag nobody will confirm, and a president who kept talking*

By Luis Goa · October 30, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/judge-opens-perjury-adjacent-probe-of-doj-over-trump-s-golf--b25bc8

## In brief

- Judge Ana Reyes ordered a special-master inquiry on Oct. 30 into whether DOJ and Interior lawyers misled her court
- Trump said the course would close Nov. 15; Woodward told the court a day later there was ‘no plan to close’ it
- More than 400 trees were felled at East Potomac the weekend of Oct. 10, budgeted at $1.7m from national-park entrance fees
- Golf course rebuild estimated at $20m-$49m; seawall repair alone estimated at $150m-$400m, funding source unconfirmed
- DOJ already tried and failed to get Reyes disqualified from the case after an earlier hearing

On October 18, President Trump wrote on Truth Social that the Interior Department had “developed a plan to build a World Class Championship Golf Course” at East Potomac and that the course would close on November 15. The next day, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward told a federal court the opposite: there was, he said, “no plan to close the course.” Eleven days and one more flat contradiction later, on October 30, US District Judge Ana Reyes opened a formal investigation into whether Woodward and other Trump administration lawyers had misrepresented the government’s position to her court, as [CBS News reported](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-golf-course-east-potomac-judge-inquiry/).

The mechanism matters more than the golf course. Reyes will run the inquiry herself, assisted by a special master — a neutral court-appointed investigator who can take testimony under oath, demand documents and recommend sanctions or contempt findings. The Justice Department has five business days to object once Reyes names someone to the role. The case dates to February, when the DC Preservation League and two local golfers sued the Interior Department, alleging the administration’s plan to redevelop the 106-year-old public course — laid out in the 1920s by the architect Walter Travis — violated environmental and historic-preservation law, a design fight [golf.com has tracked](https://golf.com/news/controversial-dc-muni-design-plan/) through Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s rollout of a new Tom Fazio routing.

Reyes named three specific things the special master will examine: whether a notice filed with the court about tree removal, hours before crews started cutting, was filed in bad faith; whether government lawyers told Jessica Bowron, the National Park Service’s acting director, to leave information out of a sworn declaration; and whether lawyers told Kevin Griess, superintendent of National Mall and Memorial Parks, what to include about budget resources in his own declaration. Bowron had separately told the court that the first she heard of a planned November 15 closure was in Trump’s own Truth Social post — from the president, not from her own agency’s planning process.

**How the contradiction piled up** Timeline from Interior's tree contract to the special-master order

| From | To | How |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Riverbend tree contract modified *(Oct. 8)* | 400+ trees felled at East Potomac *(Oct. 10 weekend)* |  |
| 400+ trees felled at East Potomac *(Oct. 10 weekend)* | Reyes blocks further cutting *(70-page opinion, Oct. 26)* |  |
| Trump: course closing Nov. 15 *(Truth Social, Oct. 18)* | DOJ: 'no plan to close' *(court, Oct. 19)* | contradicts |
| DOJ: 'no plan to close' *(court, Oct. 19)* | Special-master inquiry opened *(Oct. 30)* |  |
| Reyes blocks further cutting *(70-page opinion, Oct. 26)* | Special-master inquiry opened *(Oct. 30)* |  |
| Fazio rendering filed with planning commission *(Oct. 30)* | Special-master inquiry opened *(Oct. 30)* |  |

Based on [CBS News, CNN and Newsweek reporting on the Oct. 30 hearing](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-golf-course-east-potomac-judge-inquiry/)

The tree removal itself has a number attached. Interior Department budget documents reviewed by [the Washington Post, as syndicated by the Spokesman-Review](https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/oct/29/trump-administration-to-spend-12m-to-remove-dc-gol/), show $1.2 million budgeted for tree removal at East Potomac in fiscal 2027 and a separate $500,000 request for fiscal 2026 — money drawn from entrance fees collected at parks like Yellowstone and Yosemite, not from any DC-specific appropriation. The 400-plus trees cut the weekend of October 10 broke down as roughly 369 in one section of the Blue Course and 63 in another, officials testified, with plans for about 300 more before Reyes’s restraining order stopped the work. The contractor, Riverbend Landscapes & Tree Service of Northern Virginia, had an existing $500,000 Interior Department award for hazard-tree work on the George Washington Memorial Parkway that was modified on October 8 — two days before the East Potomac cutting began.

The bigger money is the money nobody will confirm. The golf course rebuild itself carries a preliminary cost estimate of $20 million to $49 million, based on National Park Service bid-solicitation documents [CNN reported](https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/17/politics/potomac-golf-course) in September. Separately, Woodward told Reyes at Friday’s hearing that replacing the East Potomac seawall — a project the administration had treated as low priority for years before Trump set his sights on the course — would cost between $150 million and $400 million, [Axios reported](https://www.axios.com/2026/10/30/judge-investigation-doj-interior-trump-golf-course). Asked who would pay and how the total was calculated, government lawyers called the question “deliberative” and declined to answer. The administration has separately requested $500 million for Park Service construction generally, without specifying how much would go to East Potomac; Rep. Jared Huffman has pushed appropriators to attach guardrails preventing that money from being redirected to the golf course.

## Three hours in Reyes’s courtroom

The October 30 hearing ran almost three hours, as [CNN’s John Fritze and Katelyn Polantz reported](https://cnn.com/2026/10/30/politics/dc-golf-course-trump-justice-woodward-reyes). Reyes opened by reading Woodward the District of Columbia’s professional-conduct rules on making factual assertions to a court, then asked whether anyone wanted to correct a false statement of material fact. “Let’s not play games anymore, Mr. Woodward,” she said at one point, after he tried to argue her questions weren’t legally relevant. “Are you done? Can you answer my question now?” When Woodward seemed to suggest the October 10 tree removal was part of a broader, previously undisclosed update plan — a position the administration had denied — Reyes read his own words back to him from the transcript seconds after he’d spoken them. “Are you kidding me right now?” she said. At another point she told him to “finish that thought internally” and “talk about it at drinks with your friends”; Woodward replied, “I’m not a pundit.”

Woodward is the Justice Department’s third-ranking official, and he was in Reyes’s courtroom despite also leading the department’s effort to [block certification of Alaska’s Senate race](https://rews.cc/a/the-doj-is-suing-alaska-to-block-its-senate-result-but-only--daf737) if the Republican incumbent loses the midterm count — a split in priorities that CNN flagged as its own small data point on how the department is allocating its most senior lawyer’s time two weeks before an election.

This is not the administration’s first attempt to deal with Reyes rather than with the facts. After an earlier hearing in which she said officials had done “your absolute worst” by felling the trees, the Justice Department moved to disqualify her from the case, calling her conduct “histrionics” and asking the court to release the hearing audio, according to [The Hill’s reporting on the recusal fight](https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/6157323-judge-ana-reyes-donald-trump-east-potomac-park-tree-clearing-case/). Reyes denied the motion in a 13-page opinion the following Sunday, writing that disqualification claims are harder to sustain against a full record. Both that ruling and her broader order blocking further tree removal are now on appeal.

> For months, the court trusted but did not verify. No longer.

That line is Reyes’s own, from Friday’s hearing, and it marks a reversal: earlier in the litigation she had turned down multiple requests from the plaintiffs to intervene, saying she trusted government attorneys’ representations. Norman Eisen of Democracy Forward, which represents the plaintiffs, called the special-master appointment itself an “extraordinary development,” telling [Newsweek](https://newsweek.com/trump-doj-lawyers-probe-dc-golf-course-12641476) that it is “very rare, and it is an ominous sign for the United States that the judge has appointed somebody to look into these profoundly troubling questions, including the accuracy or inaccuracy of what the United States has been saying in its filings and to the court.” Democracy Forward’s president, Skye Perryman, described the administration’s approach — citing deteriorating conditions to justify fast, irreversible changes — as a recurring “tactic” aimed at advancing what she called one of the president’s “pet vanity projects.”

Trump’s own public framing has not wavered: the course is “dangerous, dilapidated, and absolutely disgusting,” he has posted, citing an incident in which he said a White House staffer was struck in the chest by a golf ball, and warning Reyes would be held “fully responsible” if anyone were “hurt or killed” on the course. He has also called her a “crazed lunatic.” None of that changes what the special master has to determine: not whether the course is dangerous or whether Trump should get his championship layout, but whether his own department’s lawyers told a federal judge something they knew to be false.

The National Capital Planning Commission is set to take up the Fazio rendering at its December 3 meeting, [according to a government filing reported by WIS/Live 5 News](https://www.live5news.com/2026/10/29/trump-plans-golf-course-are-works-doj-announces-what-know-about-park/) — 18 days after the November 15 closure date Trump has repeatedly announced and that Interior’s own lawyers would not confirm in court as recently as this week. Whether the special master’s findings land before then, and whether Congress attaches Huffman’s guardrails to the $500 million construction line before any of it reaches East Potomac, are the numbers worth tracking next.

## See also

- [Ana C. Reyes (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ana_C._Reyes) — en.wikipedia.org · Background on the judge's appointment and prior rulings
- [East Potomac Park Golf Course (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Potomac_Park_Golf_Course) — en.wikipedia.org · History of the public course since the 1920s
- [Congressional oversight letter to Interior Secretary Burgum, Sept. 16, 2026](https://democrats-naturalresources.house.gov/imo/media/doc/2026-09-16_jh_moc_to_burgum_doi_to_bowron_nps_re_east_potomac_golf_course1.pdf) — democrats-naturalresources.house.gov · Lawmakers' written questions on cost and legal authority for the project
- [National Links Trust to end East Potomac operations Nov. 15](https://thehill.com/policy/sports-gaming/6181256-national-links-trust-east-potomac-park-dc-golf-course-controversy/) — thehill.com · Details on the operator being displaced and its leases at Rock Creek and Langston

## Sources

- [Judge tears into DOJ official and orders Trump golf course investigation](https://cnn.com/2026/10/30/politics/dc-golf-course-trump-justice-woodward-reyes) — cnn.com
- [Trump Golf Course Case Update: Judge Orders Probe of DOJ Conduct in DC Battle](https://newsweek.com/trump-doj-lawyers-probe-dc-golf-course-12641476) — newsweek.com
- [Judge opens inquiry into whether Trump officials misled court in D.C. golf course case](https://cbsnews.com/news/trump-golf-course-east-potomac-judge-inquiry/) — cbsnews.com