As Katie Zacharia said goodbye to her role as White House press secretary after just three days at the weekend, her farewell post appeared to include a blurred out document on the president’s Oval Office desk. On Friday night, Zacharia shared a post on X of herself standing near President Trump in the Oval Office where a set of blue books and a blurred map sat. It was not long before people spotted the addition.
Local advocacy group Save East Po quickly claimed that the blurred map was East Potomac park, the location of a bitter renovation debate as the president plans to redevelop a golf course there. The apparent presence of redevelopment material on Trump's desk could prove awkward for the administration as it fights a lawsuit over East Potomac. The government has maintained that recent tree-clearing was separate from Trump's proposed redesign, while a federal judge has questioned that account and is examining how far the administration's plans had progressed and who ordered work at the site.
Newsweek reached out to the White House via email for comment. Donald Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday that "restoration work will begin" on the golf course on November 15, despite a current court order by U.S. district judge Ana Reyes that temporarily bars further tree removal. Judge Reyes has previously ordered that the government must give notice before any substantial work on the site could take place, something that was not given when more than 500 trees were removed from the historic golf course earlier this month.
Reyes was furious at the removal of the trees. "I trusted you all not to do precisely what you have done," she said, adding that she was "at a total loss" to understand the government’s actions. The administration has maintained that the tree cutting was separate from Trump's redesign, saying it implemented recommendations from a 2019 cultural-landscape report.
But Reyes has already expressed skepticism about that explanation. "It is a coincidence, the government seems to suggest, that [the Department of the Interior] cut down hundreds of trees at the course weeks after the president asked DOI to cut down trees at the course," she said on October 13. The legal battle has become increasingly acrimonious.
On Friday, the Justice Department sought to have Reyes disqualified from the case, accusing her of bias against the Trump administration. Reyes rejected the request on Sunday, leaving her in charge of proceedings as senior administration officials face questioning over the work at East Potomac. When Zacharia’s first post on Friday evening drew scrutiny over the presence of potential Potomac-related documents, in her next post on Saturday the map that was previously visible was no longer there, with the area appearing blurred.
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