Trucks seen at East Potomac Park on Thursday had their license plates and the name of their business covered, in apparent violation of local and federal transportation law.
Photos and videos posted on social media by D.C. photographer Andrew Leyden showed the trucks being used to haul away debris, he said in the posts.
Under D.C. law, covering license plates is illegal. The U.S. Department of Transportation requires commercial vehicles to display the operator’s name and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration identification number on both sides.
The photos and videos of the trucks come after tumultuous exchanges this week between the Trump administration’s lawyers and a federal judge over the president’s efforts to redevelop the public golf course into a “world class championship” facility.
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On Monday, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes questioned the administration’s claim that removing hundreds of trees from East Potomac Golf Links was unrelated to President Donald Trump’s project.
The week before, Reyes ordered the redevelopment to halt until at least Oct. 26 after the government carried out a massive tree-cutting at the golf course with little notice to the court or plaintiffs.
Trump announced on social media Sunday that the golf course would close for 15 months for the project, starting Nov. 15. Hours later, the administration argued in a court filing that no plans for the construction project are final and they should not be subject to judicial review.
“There is no universe in which all of this coincidentally happened all at the same time,” Reyes said Monday.
Trump has bashed the current state of the golf course and the surrounding park areas, calling it “Trash Island” and arguing that redevelopment would attract high-level professional golf tournaments and create jobs.
In a statement to The Washington Sun, Andy Ross, president of Ross Tree Expert Company, which has a current contract for work on the park, said “the vehicle pictured is not RTEC Treecare and has no affiliation” with the company. He said the company’s work at the park involved removal of specific hazardous and invasive trees and “did not include recent mass removals of trees.”
Another company with a contract for work on East Potomac Park, Vanasse Hangen Brustlin Inc., did not respond to a request for comment Friday evening.
The Interior Department, National Park Service, U.S. Department of Transportation and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration did not respond to requests for comment.
The D.C. Preservation League, which sued in February to stop the project, also did not respond to a request for comment.
This story has been updated to include a statement from Ross Tree Expert Company.
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