DOJ filing invokes weekend White House shooting in ballroom case

A Department of Justice filing described Saturday's shooting on Pennsylvania Avenue as another attempted assassination of President Donald Trump, as the administration again urged a federal judge to drop his injunction against the White House ballroom.

The Secret Service said officers shot and killed an armed man who opened fire at a White House checkpoint Saturday evening.

A bystander was also struck by gunfire in the incident, but it was not immediately clear how, the Secret Service said.

The suspect was identified as Nasire Best, 21, of Dundalk, Maryland, according to Washington, D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department.

The DOJ's Sunday night filing says an attacker "once again sought to murder the President, his family, and his staff," when he approached a Secret Service checkpoint Saturday, "professionally pulled a high caliber gun from a bag, and opened fire in the exact direction of the White House."

Significant portions of the filing, signed by Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward --the No. 3 official at the department -- are written in the style of a Trump social media post, calling the lawsuit against the ballroom "a complete embarrassment to our Country."

"This is a terrible, tremendously harmful case to the United States of America, and all it stands for!" Woodward's filing states.

The filing also provides new details of the project's planned security features.

The filing claims the new ballroom would "provide a 'SAFE HAVEN' from attackers such as the one last night, and on April 25th," when an alleged gunman tried to storm the White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

"Without this National Security Facility, [large] events are otherwise relegated to the vulnerable tents on the South Lawn, exposed to various threats, as again shown by last night's shooting," the filing said.

Such events "would have been easily in range to reach a tent (in all cases made of plastic or canvas, which has virtually no ability to stop a bullet, unlike the walls of the Facility under construction, which has the highest degree of bullet stoppage, including that of a higher range than a large caliber AK-47), on the White House South Lawn, and cause death and destruction," the filing continued.

While noting how rare it is for the government to publicly disclose planned security features of the White House complex, the DOJ said it had been "forced" to reveal several such details "to stave off the Court's dangerous injunction."

In addition to "a heavy steel, drone proof roof, missile resistant and drone proof columns, bullet, ballistic, and blast proof glass, Military grade venting for air conditioning and heating," which have been previously shared in public filings in the case, Sunday night's notice went further.

The filing said the ballroom's roof will include a "drone port and key location for rooftop snipers who will protect the White House and the entire Washington, D.C. area, as a whole."

"Unlike virtually every similar structure in America, the Ballroom's rooftop will include no air conditioning, venting, or similar facilities -- It will be hermetically sealed to prevent malign forces from contaminating the circulating air, thereby threatening the lives of those inside," the filing added.

"Indeed, the longer this frivolous litigation persists, the more our National Security will be jeopardized as the Government continues to be forced to justify -- through the divulgence of such security installations, layout, and other specifications of construction -- the necessity for a secure addition to the White House," Woodward's filing said.

The submission to district court judge Richard Leon came as both the DOJ and the National Trust for Historic Preservation prepared for oral arguments before an appeals court panel on June 5.

Three judges of the D.C. Circuit court will weigh Leon's late March injunction against the ballroom's above-ground construction. That order has been temporarily stayed by the appeals judges, a move that has allowed work to continue.

Republican Senate leaders, meanwhile, were said last week to have given up on their plans to include a $1 billion request from the Secret Service in the immigration enforcement reconciliation bill.

Beyond being rejected by the Senate parliamentarian for failing to comply with budget rules in its drafting, the funding was said by GOP senators to lack support in the chamber.

After their billion-dollar request was initially included in the bill, Secret Service officials said only a portion of it -- some $220 million -- would have gone toward securing the new East Wing project.

The DOJ's Sunday night filing calls the ballroom "an invaluable gift from President Trump and many patriotic private donors who have given Hundreds of Millions of Dollars to build this Project, and support our Country, for the benefit and protection of all future Presidents, their families, staffs, visitors, and others."