{"id":154998,"date":"2026-06-17T15:52:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T23:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/06\/17\/doj-says-threat-to-outdoor-ufc-fights-proves-they-need-a-ballroom\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T15:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T23:52:11","slug":"doj-says-threat-to-outdoor-ufc-fights-proves-they-need-a-ballroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/06\/17\/doj-says-threat-to-outdoor-ufc-fights-proves-they-need-a-ballroom\/","title":{"rendered":"DOJ Says Threat To Outdoor UFC Fights Proves They Need A Ballroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

In April, the Justice Department wrote the court<\/a>, arguing that Donald Trump needed to have the unilateral authority to destroy national monuments and build a new vanity ballroom project without any congressional oversight because attending events \u201con the White House lawn\u201d was too dangerous. This argument seemed more than a little dubious while the president enthusiastically planned a UFC fight extravaganza for the White House lawn that President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew\u00a0Camacho would dismiss as beneath the dignity of the office. At the time, the DOJ dealt with this glaring inconsistency by ignoring it. <\/p>\n

But following the arrest of five men arrested over an alleged plot to attack UFC Freedom 250, Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate wrote the court<\/a> calling for the immediate blessing of a 90,000-square-foot ballroom because\u2026 they would\u2019ve held the cage match and motocross jumps in the ballroom? I guess. It\u2019s not particularly clear what the argument is, because the government\u2019s case is managed by, to use the technical term, fucking morons. <\/p>\n

At least this letter looks like it was written by a lawyer and not Trump himself<\/a>. Progress!<\/p>\n

The suspects, per the letter<\/a>, planned to \u201cdeploy drones armed with explosives in and around the [UFC] event\u201d to force an evacuation, then \u201cdeploy snipers to fire upon \u2018high value targets\u2019 within the fleeing crowd.\u201d All of which, Shumate writes, \u201cdemonstrates the compelling need for the East Wing Project, with a Ballroom designed to defend against just such attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

The Ballroom\u2019s mass and height will shield the White House grounds from attack, and give the Secret Service the visibility needed to identify attackers. \u2026 It will protect the President and guests at major events that are currently held in \u201cplastic tents that cannot even protect highly esteemed guests from inclement weather, let alone high caliber bullets or kamikaze drones,\u201d \u2026 exactly the attack that this Sunday\u2019s would-be assassins plotted to launch.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Consider now the geometry of that passage. The UFC venue was built in front of the White House, meaning no matter the mass and height of the ballroom, the new ballroom would be back and to the side anyway. Not to mention the fact that the capacity of an East Wing ballroom to block DRONES from the South Lawn ranks right up there with the proposed border wall\u2019s potential to stop immigrants. And drones don\u2019t even need a ladder to defeat this project.<\/p>\n

When you think about it, we don\u2019t talk enough about the parallels between Trump\u2019s first election border wall and this ballroom. Two construction projects of questionable utility that Trump promised \u2014 baselessly \u2014 that American taxpayers wouldn\u2019t have to pay for. Trump promised that Mexico would pay for the wall. Instead, $15 billion in taxpayer funds were spent on it<\/a>. This week, after Trump promising that the $200 million ballroom would be privately funded, we learned that taxpayers are already expected to be on the hook for $300 million for the project<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Claiming that the ballroom would\u2019ve protected Trump from the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner attack was dumb, given that the proposed ballroom is too small to host that event. This letter takes it to another level, glossing over the proposition that they were going to hold THIS in a ballroom.<\/p>\n

\"\"
(Photo by Alex Brandon-Pool\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I don\u2019t know, I\u2019m not sure the ballroom\u2019s ceilings can handle the motorcycle jumps.<\/p>\n

Which all sets aside whether there was ever a serious threat in the first place. The alleged plot<\/a> involved a Christian-based online group that prosecutors say were motivated by\u00a0\u201cgrievances about government corruption, the handling of the Epstein files, data centers taking up all the water in communities, and other government actions.\u201d The plot fell apart because one of the alleged teen participant\u2019s mother called in concerns.<\/p>\n

FBI Director Kash \u201cJ. Edgar Boozer\u201d Patel already took a victory lap<\/a> to celebrate foiling the plot, explaining that the \u201callegedly planned attacks were stopped cold\u201d and that pulling it off was \u201cnothing out of the ordinary for this law enforcement team.\u201d And we take him at his word on that. Even if this was a fully formed plot, it\u2019s the sort of threat \u2014 exactly like the Correspondents\u2019 Dinner event \u2014 well within the range of security threats the government is capable of handling.<\/p>\n

The DOJ\u2019s marquee evidence that the President faces an unprecedented threat demanding an unprecedented building is an operation the FBI Director describes as a routine day at the office. <\/p>\n

None of this is incidental to the legal question, which has not budged since Judge Richard Leon first looked at it. Leon found that no statute \u201ccomes close\u201d to giving Trump the authority to freestyle a nine-figure project on federal land without Congress. He called the funding a \u201cRube Goldberg contraption.\u201d He observed, with audible patience, that the \u201clarge hole\u201d beside the White House was \u201ca problem of the President\u2019s own making.\u201d The government\u2019s answer has been to keep revising what the ballroom is for, trying to tie it to the underground national security complex as though the bunker cares what lives above it. Then it became necessary because the president couldn\u2019t safely go outside despite spending the majority of his time playing golf. Now the necessity is a foiled drone attack on a sporting event the building could not have hosted\u2026 and that never needed to happen except the president wanted to hold a private gladiatorial battle on his lawn.<\/p>\n

Necessity is supposed to be the mother of invention. Here, the ballroom got invented first, and the Justice Department keeps using frivolities to reverse engineer a justification for it. Presidents don\u2019t need<\/em> to go to the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner if they don\u2019t think it\u2019s safe. And presidents don\u2019t need<\/em> to host oiled up half-naked fighting on the lawn if they think it exposes them to unacceptable risk. Presidents can better protect themselves from these threats by just not doing them at all. <\/p>\n

Or, based on what we know about this plot, the administration could also avoid this threat entirely by releasing the Epstein files and proving himself completely innocent of wrongdoing. <\/p>\n

You know, if that was something the administration could do. <\/p>\n

Earlier<\/strong>: DOJ Files Ballroom Brief That Reads Like Truth Social Post \u2014 Because Trump Probably Wrote It<\/a>
Trump DOJ Courts Rule 11 Sanctions In Ballroom Case<\/a>
Looks Like Trump Dictated Another Barely Coherent Ballroom Brief<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post DOJ Says Threat To Outdoor UFC Fights Proves They Need A Ballroom<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

In April, the Justice Department wrote the court<\/a>, arguing that Donald Trump needed to have the unilateral authority to destroy national monuments and build a new vanity ballroom project without any congressional oversight because attending events \u201con the White House lawn\u201d was too dangerous. This argument seemed more than a little dubious while the president enthusiastically planned a UFC fight extravaganza for the White House lawn that President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew\u00a0Camacho would dismiss as beneath the dignity of the office. At the time, the DOJ dealt with this glaring inconsistency by ignoring it. <\/p>\n

But following the arrest of five men arrested over an alleged plot to attack UFC Freedom 250, Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate wrote the court<\/a> calling for the immediate blessing of a 90,000-square-foot ballroom because\u2026 they would\u2019ve held the cage match and motocross jumps in the ballroom? I guess. It\u2019s not particularly clear what the argument is, because the government\u2019s case is managed by, to use the technical term, fucking morons. <\/p>\n

At least this letter looks like it was written by a lawyer and not Trump himself<\/a>. Progress!<\/p>\n

The suspects, per the letter<\/a>, planned to \u201cdeploy drones armed with explosives in and around the [UFC] event\u201d to force an evacuation, then \u201cdeploy snipers to fire upon \u2018high value targets\u2019 within the fleeing crowd.\u201d All of which, Shumate writes, \u201cdemonstrates the compelling need for the East Wing Project, with a Ballroom designed to defend against just such attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

The Ballroom\u2019s mass and height will shield the White House grounds from attack, and give the Secret Service the visibility needed to identify attackers. \u2026 It will protect the President and guests at major events that are currently held in \u201cplastic tents that cannot even protect highly esteemed guests from inclement weather, let alone high caliber bullets or kamikaze drones,\u201d \u2026 exactly the attack that this Sunday\u2019s would-be assassins plotted to launch.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Consider now the geometry of that passage. The UFC venue was built in front of the White House, meaning no matter the mass and height of the ballroom, the new ballroom would be back and to the side anyway. Not to mention the fact that the capacity of an East Wing ballroom to block DRONES from the South Lawn ranks right up there with the proposed border wall\u2019s potential to stop immigrants. And drones don\u2019t even need a ladder to defeat this project.<\/p>\n

When you think about it, we don\u2019t talk enough about the parallels between Trump\u2019s first election border wall and this ballroom. Two construction projects of questionable utility that Trump promised \u2014 baselessly \u2014 that American taxpayers wouldn\u2019t have to pay for. Trump promised that Mexico would pay for the wall. Instead, $15 billion in taxpayer funds were spent on it<\/a>. This week, after Trump promising that the $200 million ballroom would be privately funded, we learned that taxpayers are already expected to be on the hook for $300 million for the project<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Claiming that the ballroom would\u2019ve protected Trump from the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner attack was dumb, given that the proposed ballroom is too small to host that event. This letter takes it to another level, glossing over the proposition that they were going to hold THIS in a ballroom.<\/p>\n

\"\"
(Photo by Alex Brandon-Pool\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I don\u2019t know, I\u2019m not sure the ballroom\u2019s ceilings can handle the motorcycle jumps.<\/p>\n

Which all sets aside whether there was ever a serious threat in the first place. The alleged plot<\/a> involved a Christian-based online group that prosecutors say were motivated by\u00a0\u201cgrievances about government corruption, the handling of the Epstein files, data centers taking up all the water in communities, and other government actions.\u201d The plot fell apart because one of the alleged teen participant\u2019s mother called in concerns.<\/p>\n

FBI Director Kash \u201cJ. Edgar Boozer\u201d Patel already took a victory lap<\/a> to celebrate foiling the plot, explaining that the \u201callegedly planned attacks were stopped cold\u201d and that pulling it off was \u201cnothing out of the ordinary for this law enforcement team.\u201d And we take him at his word on that. Even if this was a fully formed plot, it\u2019s the sort of threat \u2014 exactly like the Correspondents\u2019 Dinner event \u2014 well within the range of security threats the government is capable of handling.<\/p>\n

The DOJ\u2019s marquee evidence that the President faces an unprecedented threat demanding an unprecedented building is an operation the FBI Director describes as a routine day at the office. <\/p>\n

None of this is incidental to the legal question, which has not budged since Judge Richard Leon first looked at it. Leon found that no statute \u201ccomes close\u201d to giving Trump the authority to freestyle a nine-figure project on federal land without Congress. He called the funding a \u201cRube Goldberg contraption.\u201d He observed, with audible patience, that the \u201clarge hole\u201d beside the White House was \u201ca problem of the President\u2019s own making.\u201d The government\u2019s answer has been to keep revising what the ballroom is for, trying to tie it to the underground national security complex as though the bunker cares what lives above it. Then it became necessary because the president couldn\u2019t safely go outside despite spending the majority of his time playing golf. Now the necessity is a foiled drone attack on a sporting event the building could not have hosted\u2026 and that never needed to happen except the president wanted to hold a private gladiatorial battle on his lawn.<\/p>\n

Necessity is supposed to be the mother of invention. Here, the ballroom got invented first, and the Justice Department keeps using frivolities to reverse engineer a justification for it. Presidents don\u2019t need<\/em> to go to the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner if they don\u2019t think it\u2019s safe. And presidents don\u2019t need<\/em> to host oiled up half-naked fighting on the lawn if they think it exposes them to unacceptable risk. Presidents can better protect themselves from these threats by just not doing them at all. <\/p>\n

Or, based on what we know about this plot, the administration could also avoid this threat entirely by releasing the Epstein files and proving himself completely innocent of wrongdoing. <\/p>\n

You know, if that was something the administration could do. <\/p>\n

Earlier<\/strong>: DOJ Files Ballroom Brief That Reads Like Truth Social Post \u2014 Because Trump Probably Wrote It<\/a>
Trump DOJ Courts Rule 11 Sanctions In Ballroom Case<\/a>
Looks Like Trump Dictated Another Barely Coherent Ballroom Brief<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In April, the Justice Department wrote the court, arguing that Donald Trump needed to have the unilateral authority to destroy national monuments and build a new vanity ballroom project without any congressional oversight because attending events \u201con the White House lawn\u201d was too dangerous. This argument seemed more than a little dubious while the president […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":154999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Headshot-300x200-LyHyAa.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}