Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward clashed Monday with a D.C. judge over golf course tree removals after President Trump criticized her for denying recusal.
Lawyers for the Trump administration faced D.C. District Judge Ana Reyes in a heated federal hearing over whether the government deliberately misled her about why crews took down more than 500 trees at East Potomac Golf Links in Washington.
ABC News reported that Reyes pressed for answers on the Columbus Day weekend removals, ordered testimony from senior officials, and locked horns with the Justice Department’s No. 3 official over how the case was being handled.
The fight sits at the center of litigation brought by the D.C. Preservation League against President Trump’s plan to renovate the public course into a facility that could host professional tournaments. Reyes is blocking major construction while that case moves forward.
Trump announced on social media Sunday that full-scale renovations would begin Nov. 15. Whether that date holds remains unclear while the judge keeps major work on ice.
Reyes confronted Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward over a simple fact: none of the Justice Department lawyers on the East Potomac case had joined him in signing his recent legal briefs.
Woodward said he would instruct each attorney not to answer her question. Reyes ordered him to file a brief by 3 p.m. Monday explaining the legal rationale for that instruction.
The exchange marked a rare public clash between a sitting district judge and one of the department’s highest-ranking officials. It also followed an overnight push by the department to knock Reyes off the case.
That effort failed. Woodward had argued she harbored a clear political bias against the Trump administration. Reyes rejected the recusal motion and stayed on the bench for Monday’s hearing, a fight that tracks earlier administration moves to remove the judge from the same dispute.
In her written response, Reyes did not hold back about the standard the government had to meet.
"It is easy to weaponize selective quotations to bring a baseless recusal motion."
She went further in the same filing.
"But it is much harder to meet the demanding legal standard against a full record. By any objective measure, the Government fails to meet the standard for recusal. And the Court does not, on its review, conclude it is mandatory."
Just The News reported that Reyes denied the request late Sunday and still ordered key officials to appear Monday, keeping the hearing on track even after the failed disqualification bid.
The government’s core defense rests on a 2019 Cultural Landscape Report. Officials say that document called for removal of dead, dying, and hazardous trees around the course.
Interior Department official Gregory Wischer, a political appointee ordered to testify, maintained the work was about cleaning up the grounds. He said the cuts were not tied to Trump’s separate renovation plans.
"cleaning up the course"
Attorney Abbe Lowell repeatedly pressed Wischer on whether the 2019 report was a credible explanation for the abrupt holiday-weekend action. Reyes had demanded advance notice of any significant alterations because of the ongoing suit. The trees came down anyway.
Last week, Reyes erupted at government attorneys after learning of the removals. She said there appeared to be “a strong showing of bad faith” on the government’s part and ordered testimony from Wischer and acting National Park Service Director Jessica Bowron over the lack of proper advance notice.
A photo from Oct. 12, 2026, showed a golfer walking past the stump of a large tree at East Potomac Golf Links, a concrete marker of how far the cleanup had already gone. Related coverage has followed Trump’s push for a championship rebuild as the court kept demanding answers.
Reyes is currently blocking the administration from any major construction on the course. She has also extended an order barring further tree removal while the dispute continues.
The D.C. Preservation League filed the underlying case in response to Trump’s effort to turn East Potomac into a championship-caliber public venue. The administration’s position is that hazardous-tree work under the 2019 report stands apart from the larger redesign.
Reyes has treated the timing and the lack of notice as central problems. The government has treated the 2019 report as the controlling justification and has rejected the claim that the weekend removals were a stealth start on the Trump renovation.
Trump, for his part, posted Sunday that full-scale renovations would start Nov. 15 and separately criticized Reyes after she rejected the Justice Department’s overnight effort to disqualify her. The president has framed the project as a straightforward upgrade of a public course, a theme also covered in reporting on his championship rebuild announcement for the historic D.C. links.
By the end of the session, several points were no longer abstract. More than 500 trees were gone. The judge had already erupted once over the lack of notice. A recusal motion had failed. Woodward had refused to let line attorneys answer a question about brief signatures and now owed the court a written legal explanation by mid-afternoon.
Wischer stayed on message that the removals were cleanup, not renovation. Lowell kept testing that account against the 2019 report. Bowron was under order to explain the National Park Service’s role in the abrupt weekend action.
None of that resolves the larger suit. It does show how tightly Reyes has wound the short-term restraints around a project the White House wants finished on a public timetable. Earlier orders had already frozen further tree cutting at the same course through late October.
The administration still holds the 2019 landscape report as its primary paper trail. The preservation group still holds a live case. The judge still holds the injunction power. And the No. 3 official at the Justice Department is now on the record instructing colleagues not to answer a judicial question about who signs the government’s briefs.
Public courses should be maintained, hazardous trees should come down, and elected administrations should be able to improve federal lands without a single district judge turning every cleanup into a political trial. Monday’s hearing showed how quickly that basic work can get dragged into a recusal fight, a signature dispute, and a blockade on construction the public may never get to use.
