National Trust sues Trump admin over ballroom plans

The nation's historical preservation group is now suing the Trump administration over its plans to build a giant ballroom over at the White House. Back in October, the Trump administration quickly demolished the White House East Wing to make room for the ballroom for this project. I want to bring in CNN's Brian Todd. Brian, why is the National Trust taking this dramatic step?

And this is a lengthy lawsuit.

It's a lengthy lawsuit, Wolf, 47 pages. It was filed just moments ago. We have a copy of this lawsuit now. To answer your question, Wolf, they are suing because they want this project halted, first and foremost.

And they're suing because they said that the White House and its allies and certain agencies like the National Park Service did not get the necessary approvals or conduct the necessary reviews. We have a copy of this lawsuit. You see the pictures here.

This has been what many people have been complaining about, the demolition of the East Wing of the White House that began in October for the construction of a 90,000 square foot ballroom. And just moments ago, as Wolf mentioned, we've obtained a copy of this lawsuit from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. They are suing the National Park Service. They are suing President Trump himself, plus the National Park

Service, plus the Department of the Interior and Interior Secretary Douglas Burgum and others over the construction of the ballroom where the East Wing and the colonnade used to be. And here is just one quote from one of the initial pages of the lawsuit quote. No president is legally allowed to tear down And here is just one quote from one of the initial pages of the lawsuit. Quote,

No president is legally allowed to tear down portions of the White House without any review whatsoever. Not President Trump, not President Biden, and not anyone else. 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. What they are also saying is that there are two entities

from which the White House needed to seek approval and at least a review of this project, the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts. And according to this lawsuit from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the White House did not seek any review from those agencies and did not seek any public input on this project.

Now, I can tell you also, Wolf, we are reaching out to the White House for comment. Our colleague Kevin Liptack is handling that right now. We should be able to get that from Kevin in just a moment. But what I will say is that the president has had this in his sights to renovate this area, to do a ballroom for years, not just months, years, including before he came into office.

He said he offered the Obama administration, you know, that he said he would pay for it. The Obama administration, he said, never got back to him. President Trump has said many times that he believes this is necessary, that people who come to the White House for certain events,

they have to go to a tent that's kind of separate from the main body of the White House. And in bad weather, a lot of people who are here for balls and things like that, they just get kind of disheveled having to walk through the rain and get into a tent. That's been his perspective.

He's been eyeing this for a long time. His idea is to make this very much like the Donald Trump ballroom at Mar-a-Lago. And there are plenty of other ballrooms, and I've been to many of them, right near the White House, huge ballrooms that they could go to and not just a tent. I've been to the tent on the backyard of the White House, on the north lawn of the White House and the south lawn of the White House as well. And that east wing was beautiful.

Too bad it's been destroyed. All right, Brian. Thank you very, very much. Kevin Liptack is over at the White House right now. This has been a huge priority for the president, and as Brian just said, you're working to get some reaction. Are you learning anything?

Yeah, the White House hasn't responded to this lawsuit specifically, but I'll tell you that White House officials have sort of downplayed criticism from this particular group, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which you'll remember back in October, as this project was getting underway,

actually wrote a letter to the White House asking them to pause work, to go through some of these various boards for review. And the White House said at the time that this trust, the National Trust for Historic Preservation was comprised of, quote, loser Democrats and liberal donors.

And so you see them kind of shrugging off the criticism. We should say that this body is chartered by Congress, tasked with preserving some of the nation's historic buildings. It actually does have a relationship with President Trump, dating back to the 1990s. It worked with him on some projects at Mar-a-Lago. So he does have sort of an existing relationship with this body going back several

decades. We should say that the boards that this group is now requesting and demanding that the court require that the administration go through, the National Capital Planning Commission, is now stocked with President Trump's appointees. It's led by Will Scharf, who's the staff secretary at the White House. He has said previously that this project will eventually go before that body, but that its purview and that its remit does not cover demolition.

And that is why they say this project didn't go before that board before they began tearing down the East Wing, but that once sort of vertical construction begins, that it will go before that board before they began tearing down the E-string, but that once sort of vertical construction begins, that it will go before that body. And so whether this lawsuit sort of spurs that action and prompts them to go more quickly remains to be seen. But you're right.

This is an absolute priority of the president's. He still mentions that on almost a weekly basis. When the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was here, for example, the president said that the dinner he held in his honor on the White House State Floor would have been a much grander occasion if they had had that ballroom constructed in his honor. We should also say that there has been some discord among the planning team.

The president has assigned a new architect, the previous architect still on board, but he had reportedly raised some questions about the sheer scale of this project. The president is envisioning a 90,000-square-foot ballroom. The White House itself is only about 55,000 square feet. And one of the concerns that the National Trust for Historic Preservation has raised is that they would essentially dwarf the original building

once it's completed. And so all of these concerns are now due to be heard in court.

The president keeps pointing out that this ballroom will be paid for by private donations, not taxpayers.

Is that a factor here?

It could be. And I think, you know, the president and the White House have said that they will be transparent and they have released some of the names of the donors who will contribute to this project. One of the questions is how potentially they'll be honored as part of it, whether their names will be written on the wall or whether they'll have sort of plaques in the final ballroom to designate

who donated and what sort of contribution they were able to make to this project. But it has raised certainly questions about what kind of influence those donors might have with the White House and whether or not these individuals are essentially using these donations to curry favor with the President, recognizing that this is a major priority

of his.

All right, Kevin Liptack at the White House for us. All right, Kevin Liptack at the White House for us.

Kevin, thank you very, very much.