Monday’s hearing in the East Potomac Golf Course case came with a fun lil’ preshow. Before U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes took the bench, the DC Preservation League filed a notice letting her know that the President of the United States had spent his predawn hours calling her “a crazed lunatic whose courthouse tapes will reveal, may be insane?”
The question mark is his.
As journalist Adam Klasfeld put it, “A preservation group just alerted Judge Reyes that Trump just attacked her on social media right before today’s hearing in the East Potomac Golf Course case.” Which is a sentence that should be unthinkable, and in 2026 is just a Monday.
The filing is a deadpan little gem. Plaintiffs’ counsel notes the post went up at 6:08 a.m. Eastern Time, then helpfully explains that the attached screenshot reads 5:08 a.m. “because the undersigned is in the Central Time Zone.” That’s the level of precision a lawyer brings to a federal court. On the other side of the ledger is a man who can’t get the name of the Department of the Interior right. The filing reproduces the post in full:
The United States Department of Interior [sic] wants to take a terrible and very unsafe golf course, and make it into a great, safe, and prestigious golf course. They have an absolute right to do so. It’s as simple as that! The judge on the case is a crazed lunatic whose courthouse tapes will reveal, may be insane? The tapes have been blocked from usage by the judge. The random golfer bringing the ridiculous lawsuit has ZERO STANDING! The experts at “Interior” are allowed to do this First Class renovation “as of right.” They do not need an approval. Work is scheduled to begin IMMEDIATELY! The finished product will be World Class, and bring income and great prestige back to D.C. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT
They sic’d the president. Respect.
But the insult isn’t even the most legally interesting part of the post. That would be “IMMEDIATELY.” Last week, after the administration cleared hundreds of healthy trees from the course with barely any notice, Reyes ordered a halt through October 26. She also required the government to give the court and plaintiffs three business days’ written advance notice before any irreparable modification to the course. On Sunday, Trump himself said restoration work would start November 15 as part of a 15-month closure. By Monday morning, the timeline had moved up to “IMMEDIATELY,” and the only thing that happened in between was a federal judge declining to step aside.
“They do not need an approval,” the president says. They do, however, need to comply with a court order. And the Justice Department lawyers who have to stand in front of Reyes today know it, even if their client doesn’t.
About that judge declining to step aside. On Friday, DOJ moved to disqualify Reyes, accusing her of a “pattern of animus against the Trump administration” for daring to be furious when the government chainsawed its way around her notice requirements. She denied the motion Sunday night. The Truth Social post went up roughly nine hours later.
There’s history here, too. Last year, DOJ filed a misconduct complaint against Reyes over her handling of the trans military ban case, and Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan of the D.C. Circuit tossed it, explaining that if the department thought she was biased, the proper move was a recusal motion. So DOJ finally took the advice, lost in about 48 hours, and then Trump logged on.
Earlier this year, after Reyes blocked the administration from ending temporary protected status for Haitians, she read some of the death threats she received from the bench, including messages attacking her as an immigrant and a lesbian, and one telling her the best way she could help America was to “eat a bullet.” Trump didn’t use Reyes’s name in Monday’s post, but he didn’t need to. Everyone reading it knows exactly who “the judge on the case” is, and some subset of them is the same crowd that sends the emails.
Reyes spent months insisting she had no interest in becoming the overseer of Parks and Rec, and her reward for asking the government to give three days’ notice before it fires up the chainsaws is the President of the United States suggesting, at 6:08 in the morning, that she’s insane.
Earlier: DOJ Demands Judge Recuse Herself For Inappropriate Noticing They Broke The Law
‘You Did Your Absolute Worst’: Judge Delivers Epic Benchslap Over Trump Golf Course Chainsaw Spree
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1
The post Golf Course Plaintiffs Give Judge Reyes A Heads-Up: The President Called You Insane Before Breakfast appeared first on Above the Law.
Monday’s hearing in the East Potomac Golf Course case came with a fun lil’ preshow. Before U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes took the bench, the DC Preservation League filed a notice letting her know that the President of the United States had spent his predawn hours calling her “a crazed lunatic whose courthouse tapes will reveal, may be insane?”
The question mark is his.
As journalist Adam Klasfeld put it, “A preservation group just alerted Judge Reyes that Trump just attacked her on social media right before today’s hearing in the East Potomac Golf Course case.” Which is a sentence that should be unthinkable, and in 2026 is just a Monday.
The filing is a deadpan little gem. Plaintiffs’ counsel notes the post went up at 6:08 a.m. Eastern Time, then helpfully explains that the attached screenshot reads 5:08 a.m. “because the undersigned is in the Central Time Zone.” That’s the level of precision a lawyer brings to a federal court. On the other side of the ledger is a man who can’t get the name of the Department of the Interior right. The filing reproduces the post in full:
The United States Department of Interior [sic] wants to take a terrible and very unsafe golf course, and make it into a great, safe, and prestigious golf course. They have an absolute right to do so. It’s as simple as that! The judge on the case is a crazed lunatic whose courthouse tapes will reveal, may be insane? The tapes have been blocked from usage by the judge. The random golfer bringing the ridiculous lawsuit has ZERO STANDING! The experts at “Interior” are allowed to do this First Class renovation “as of right.” They do not need an approval. Work is scheduled to begin IMMEDIATELY! The finished product will be World Class, and bring income and great prestige back to D.C. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT
They sic’d the president. Respect.
But the insult isn’t even the most legally interesting part of the post. That would be “IMMEDIATELY.” Last week, after the administration cleared hundreds of healthy trees from the course with barely any notice, Reyes ordered a halt through October 26. She also required the government to give the court and plaintiffs three business days’ written advance notice before any irreparable modification to the course. On Sunday, Trump himself said restoration work would start November 15 as part of a 15-month closure. By Monday morning, the timeline had moved up to “IMMEDIATELY,” and the only thing that happened in between was a federal judge declining to step aside.
“They do not need an approval,” the president says. They do, however, need to comply with a court order. And the Justice Department lawyers who have to stand in front of Reyes today know it, even if their client doesn’t.
About that judge declining to step aside. On Friday, DOJ moved to disqualify Reyes, accusing her of a “pattern of animus against the Trump administration” for daring to be furious when the government chainsawed its way around her notice requirements. She denied the motion Sunday night. The Truth Social post went up roughly nine hours later.
There’s history here, too. Last year, DOJ filed a misconduct complaint against Reyes over her handling of the trans military ban case, and Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan of the D.C. Circuit tossed it, explaining that if the department thought she was biased, the proper move was a recusal motion. So DOJ finally took the advice, lost in about 48 hours, and then Trump logged on.
Earlier this year, after Reyes blocked the administration from ending temporary protected status for Haitians, she read some of the death threats she received from the bench, including messages attacking her as an immigrant and a lesbian, and one telling her the best way she could help America was to “eat a bullet.” Trump didn’t use Reyes’s name in Monday’s post, but he didn’t need to. Everyone reading it knows exactly who “the judge on the case” is, and some subset of them is the same crowd that sends the emails.
Reyes spent months insisting she had no interest in becoming the overseer of Parks and Rec, and her reward for asking the government to give three days’ notice before it fires up the chainsaws is the President of the United States suggesting, at 6:08 in the morning, that she’s insane.
Earlier: DOJ Demands Judge Recuse Herself For Inappropriate Noticing They Broke The Law
‘You Did Your Absolute Worst’: Judge Delivers Epic Benchslap Over Trump Golf Course Chainsaw Spree
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1
