A demolition crew takes apart the facade of the East Wing of the White House, where U.S. President Donald Trump's proposed ballroom is being built, in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 21, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
The National Trust for Historic Preservation submitted its response to a court filing from President Donald Trump demanding his ballroom as a necessary security measure after a gunman rushed law enforcement at the White House Correspondents' dinner.
“What happened last night is exactly the reason that our great Military, Secret Service, Law Enforcement and, for different reasons, every President for the last 150 years, have been demanding that a large, safe and secure Ballroom be built on the grounds of the White House” Trump wrote on the Sunday following the dinner. NBC News characterized the claim as “without evidence.”
“This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House. It cannot be built fast enough!” Trump added.
In a legal brief, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward made four major errors with falsehoods, the Trust wrote in its response filed late Thursday, according to national security expert Marcy Wheeler.
"The Defendants make multiple factual representations to the Court that the Defendants’ counsel know to be false," the filing explains.
First, the National Trust said the White House claimed they were “shown detailed plans and specifications of this knitted, unified and cohesive structure by Top Officers and Leaders in both the Military and Secret Service.”
"This statement is false: The National Trust has never been shown non-public plans or specifications of any sort," the National Trust explained. They went further, citing the DOJ's filing, which claimed that doing so would compromise "the interests of national security."
The second falsehood the National Trust listed addresses the DOJ's claim that the National Trust was “asked by the United States Military not to bring this suit because of the Top Secret nature of the important facility being built." It's outright false, the National Trust said.
Third, the DOJ claimed that “Congress has never dictated or tampered with the zoning, permitting or architectural aspects” of any White House project.
The National Trust called it false, but further pointed out that in a previous filing, the DOJ acknowledged that Congress “inject[ed] itself into White House architectural choices” during the 1949 renovation.
Finally, the DOJ made a bizarre assertion that the National Trust's case is claiming standing based on a woman "walking her dog in the vicinity of the White House."
In fact, the standing is a National Trust board member, "who is the former senior historian at the Historic American Buildings Survey of the National Park Service, the former Vice President of the D.C. Preservation League, the author of six books on American vernacular architecture and a regular visitor to President’s Park."
The filing goes on to say that the motion from Trump's team rushes "to undo an injunction they have never accepted, and which they have tried to misinterpret out of existence."
The Trump team is also acting as if the construction has somehow been stopped. The National Trust refutes that too saying, "to date — construction has continued unabated. Work at the East Wing site has not been paused for even a single minute, because the injunction has not yet gone into effect."
It also attacked the filing as "reckless" for claiming that the lawsuit makes the hyperbolic accusation that “endangers the lives of all Presidents, current and future.” It also alleges such a claim is "unprofessional" for the lawyer to have made.
In their final paragraphs, the National Trust said that the filing might be great for the likes of Truth Social but that in a federal filing, such false accusations aren't permitted.