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Justice Department seeks removal of East Potomac judge for bias
A filing accuses Judge Ana Reyes of bias and asks for the golf course case to go to another judge, three days after she barred more tree felling and before a hearing at which two officials must appear.
At 8.33pm Eastern on Friday, the Justice Department asked for Judge Ana Reyes to be taken off the lawsuit over East Potomac Golf Links and the case given to another judge. According to Golf Channel, the 14-page motion, filed by Stanley E. Woodward, the associate attorney general, says “Judge Reyes’s histrionics in prior hearings have clearly demonstrated she is no longer impartial”.
The filing accuses Reyes of shouting at and belittling a government lawyer and of questioning the intelligence of the administration’s attorneys at the hearing on Monday 12 October. At that hearing she said the government had done its “absolute worst” after National Park Service crews felled about 430 trees at the public course in Washington DC. The motion also asks for the audio of that hearing to be released. According to Newsweek, the plaintiffs, the DC Preservation League and two local residents, told the court they were “aware of no basis for disqualification or recusal” and left the question of the audio to the judge.
Reyes, who was nominated by President Biden in 2022, has barred any more felling until at least 26 October. She has also ordered Gregory Wischer, the Interior Department’s deputy chief of staff for policy, and Jessica Bowron, the acting director of the Park Service, to appear and be ready to testify under oath at the next hearing. The government objects to that order on separation-of-powers grounds.
That hearing is on Monday 19 October at 10am Eastern (14:00 GMT). Reyes has asked both sides for written arguments on whether to grant a preliminary injunction that would freeze work on the course while the case goes on.
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