The Justice Department returned to court Friday in the ongoing legal battle over the East Potomac Park golf course, and the hearing quickly turned contentious as department lawyers hedged in their answers to Judge Ana Reyes' questions. The course sits within East Potomac Park, a riverside federal park administered by the Interior Department's National Park Service.

The stakes in the case rose this week after a whistleblower revealed that the administration was destroying documents containing conversations about all Washington, D.C., construction projects involving the president. The disclosure was among the first matters Reyes raised on Friday, according to a running account of the hearing published by Lawfare's Molly Roberts.

Reyes asked those in the courtroom whether they knew what a "zeptosecond" was — the shortest measurement of time ever recorded in a laboratory. If she learned that documents had been destroyed, she warned, she would start proceedings on "sanctions or contempt in a zeptosecond." That authority is standard in litigation: parties that destroy evidence can face sanctions or contempt findings.

The judge has already appointed a special master — a neutral appointee charged with independently probing disputed questions and reporting back to the court — to investigate whether the DOJ lied to the court about what was unfolding in the case. On Thursday, the department submitted a filing expressing its opposition to the special master. Reyes has also begun opening each hearing by asking whether anyone needs to correct the record because they may have inadvertently made false statements to the court.

Reyes then turned to the golf course's design, questioning Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam R.F. Gustafson. The two lawyers said repeatedly that they could not fully answer what the final design would be.

"I understand the government's argument that as a matter of law ... a million things have to happen," the judge said, according to Roberts' account, before asking them to set that argument aside. "The Department of Interior has filed a submission with the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) that has an attached design to it."

Gustafson held up the image but brushed past it, noting that it was the same design the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) is using. The two commissions are the federal review bodies for significant construction in Washington, and projects on the capital's federal land generally clear NCPC planning review and CFA design review. It is also the design Trump posted on Truth Social. Yet Woodward would not say whether it was the final design.

"That is what I want to avoid today," Roberts paraphrased Reyes as saying. "Here is what I want: Yes or no, the championship-style course by Tom Fazio ... assuming you get the necessary approvals, is that what we're going with?" Fazio is among the most prominent course architects in golf.

Gustafson responded that it was the plan for now — then appeared to irritate the judge further by asking her to repeat her question. Reyes told Gustafson that it would "behoove" him to listen, and asked whether there had been any pushback to the plan.

"I can't say that I've polled the public on this, your Honor," Gustafson replied.

The answer did not go over well. Reyes said it would have been a "ridiculous question for me to ask," and urged the lawyer: "When I ask questions, why don't you actually listen to my question and assume that I'm not asking an idiotic question?"

Gustafson said his "understanding is really limited to what has happened in the courtroom," adding that he was unaware of public sentiment about the golf course because "I don't have a television."

So Reyes asked everyone in the courtroom to raise their hands if they had strong feelings about the golf course.

"Turn around, sir," she said.

Hundreds of arms went up, Roberts reported — the majority of the people in the room.

The hearing continued from there, with further clashes between the judge and the DOJ. From here, the markers to watch are concrete: the special master's investigation into whether the DOJ lied to the court, which the department has formally opposed; whether the whistleblower's document-destruction account is substantiated; and whether the government ultimately gives a definitive yes-or-no on the Fazio design.