President Donald Trump has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in his ongoing lawsuits over the construction of his ballroom, NBC News reported.
Read more Fed up Canadians demand expulsion of key Trump ally
The building was put on hold last week after Trump lost an appeal that held he hadn’t followed the necessary procedures to tear down the East Wing of the White House and begin building his new safety bunker and ballroom.
Lower courts have debated the matter, dividing the projects into two sections. The first section is the bunker, which Trump now paints as a kind of “military complex” that will be under the White House. Atop it will sit a massive, 9,000-square-foot ballroom.
The emergency appeal comes after Trump lost his appeal last Friday.
“Whether or not a massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide,” the court wrote. The court also stayed its ruling for two weeks, meaning it wouldn’t enforce it immediately to give the administration time to appeal to the Supreme Court.
“Each president is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence. The president has no — and claims no — constitutionally assigned authority over that property,” the judges said.
Read more GOP strategists ‘tearing their hair out’ as Trump insiders feed him bad data
In the Supreme Court filing, Solicitor General D. John Sauer claimed, “If allowed to go into effect, the injunction would wrongfully install a single district judge as sole arbiter of what further construction is ‘strictly necessary’ to protect the safety of the President, his family, staff members, and visitors to the White House, including foreign dignitaries and presidents and prime ministers of other countries.”
A ruling by that lower-court judge, Richard Leon, was upheld by the appeals court.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit approved an injunction issued by Leon.
Trump raged on Truth Social after the appeals court ruling, saying “We are not tenants, who pay rent and do all other things that a tenant must do, we are president, elected by the people of the United States of America, and have many rights, including the right to fix, renovate, secure, protect and beautify the White House grounds, which has been built and rebuilt, renovated and rerenovated, repaired and, simply, made better, many times since 1792, and never needing the permission of Congress, or anyone else, to do so,” Trump said in a rambling Truth Social post, calling the decision a national security threat and “national disgrace.”
Read more Trump admin’s massive push to prove voter fraud just completely backfired
