Judge Ana Reyes issued an order on Tuesday after a whistleblower reported that President Donald Trump’s administration was destroying documents involving all of his construction projects.
The Democratic Congress will be sworn in on Jan. 3, and forthcoming committee chairs are already issuing letters to the administration not to destroy documents.
Multiple whistleblowers revealed that this is already happening, CNN reported.
In a court order, Reyes made it clear that all documents must be preserved. That said, she also ordered that no major work be done on the Potomac East Golf Course without informing her. Over 400 trees were chopped down the day after they “informed” Reyes with a filing at 4:55 p.m. on a Friday before a federal holiday weekend.
Her Tuesday order demanded that the National Park Service, the Justice Department, the Department of the Interior and any of their components or offices retain all documents.
She ultimately banned any work on the golf course for a few weeks.
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calf.) is set to take over the House Natural Resources Committee in the 120th Congress. It’s the committee that oversees Trump’s construction projects, including the grand arch and the golf course project, both of which are facing litigation.
Huffman said he intends to send letters to the Department of the Interior, National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management to “preserve all records and data responsive to oversight” by the congressional panel.
The department claimed that the whistleblowers are “100 percent false.”
“The Department follows all federal records management obligations as directed by the Department’s ethics officials,” a spokesperson told CNN in a statement.
There are other letters being sent to the Department of Agriculture and companies like Lockheed Martin and John Deere, which have donated corporate cash to Trump’s various projects.
According to Huffman, winter is coming for the Trump administration.
“Everything is coming; it’s all coming,” Huffman said when speaking to CNN in an interview. He signaled that his new committee is ready to use its power despite being one of the quieter, unassuming parts of the House.
“It’s just going to be an entirely new day,” he promised.
CNN also reported, “In anticipation of possible obstruction from the administration, the committee is prepared to issue subpoenas.”
Huffman said that his committee has “standing” to take the administration to court over the projects.
“We’ll have tools to be able to stop a lot of it,” he promised.
The House Oversight and Reform Committee has also sent document preservation letters to the Department of Homeland Security. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who is likely to take over the House Judiciary Committee, issued a document-preservation order to the White House before the election.