Donald Trump has revealed details of his new White House nuclear-proof mega bunker and ballroom project complete with “state-of-the-art hospital”.
This came as he criticized an “out of control” judge who had forced him to halt ground work on the $400 million project.
The US President has been ordered to stop work on the upper portion of the bunker and ballroom plan for the White House.
Judge Richard Lyons said Trump had tried to circumvent a previous court order by claiming the ballroom was vital to national security.
Lyons said: “National security is not a blank check to pursue otherwise illegal activity.”
The White House was sued by the National Trust for Historic Preservation over dramatic plans to replace the East Wing with a new 1,350-person capacity ballroom.
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He hit back, saying that the ballroom was “needed now” and that the underground bunker would be “useless” without the overhead portion of the project.
He said the bunker is connected to the above-ground portion and that the project “all comes together as a large, expensive and very complex unit that is critical to the national security and military operations of the United States”.
The US President claimed that the upper part of the project would include “state-of-the-art hospitals and medical facilities” and “top secret military installations”.
They will be protected by “missile resistant steel”, “drone proof roofs and terraces” and “bullet, ballistic and blast proof glass”, he said.
Trump has already demolished the East Wing of the White House to make way for the bunker and ballroom project.
He labeled Richard Lyons an “out of control, Trump-hating, Washington, D.C. District Court judge” and claimed that his decision to halt construction would “seriously endanger the lives and welfare of those who live and work in the White House”.
Trump expressed anger that the judge was “attempting to prevent future presidents and world leaders from creating a safe meeting place on a large scale”.
He stressed that a ballroom of this scale has been sought for 150 years and the current 200-person capacity room is too small.
Trump’s plans for a nuclear-proof megabunker were revealed in late March, when the Secret Service warned that a delay or halt to the ballroom’s construction could pose a “national security concern.”
The eastern wing of the official presidential residence contains an underground vault dating from the 1940s.
The original Nuclear Vault – formally known as the Presidential Emergency Operations Center – was built after Pearl Harbor.
But the East Wing was demolished last year to make way for a controversial $400 million ballroom project, which is being privately funded by Trump and other donors.
The ballroom would be the largest structural change to the Executive Mansion since the addition of the Truman Balcony overlooking the South Lawn in 1948, dwarfing even the building itself.
Shalom Baranes, the architect who took over the project last year, said at a meeting of the National Capital Planning Commission in Washington in January that the ballroom will be about 22,000 square feet.
