Greg Wischer, chief of staff at the Department of the Interior, appeared in federal court on Monday morning to testify in the lawsuit over the East Potomac Golf Course involving President Donald Trump's administration. The public course sits on National Park Service land in Washington, D.C., a park agency that operates under the Interior Department.

Wischer had been absent the previous Monday, when U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes ordered National Park Service and DOI staff to appear in court and testify about what was happening. The judge expressed fury last week that her orders were being ignored, and by Monday she remained openly annoyed with the government's lawyers, though she did not raise her voice as she had during the prior hearing. At issue is how much of the government's internal decision-making can be compelled into the open — a question that stretches well beyond a single golf course.

Wischer's testimony quickly became contentious. Stanley Woodward, the associate attorney general of the United States, objected to multiple questions posed by both the plaintiffs and the judge, asserting that the discussions were covered by-client privilege. According to reporting by Lawfare's Roger Parloff on the Monday hearing, a lawyer had ultimately been added to several email exchanges.

"We are asserting privilege," Woodward said after everyone returned from a short break, arguing that the matter was already under litigation when the email exchanges and meetings took place.

", it was DOJ made the decision to notify the court about the tree plan on timing it did; not Interior?" the judge asked.

"I don't know. I can find out," Woodward responded.

"I do want to know," Reyes said.

The judge pressed further: "So there was an understanding that [Tree Management Plan] TMP might be relevant to litigation?"

"Absolutely," Woodward replied, adding that the deliberative process privilege also applied. "There is a decision on Oct. 9. All decisions that lead up to that are deliberative. It's my understanding his testimony will be he was going fast and hard on all projects."

"Just a massive coincidence that all this happened?" the judge asked.

When Woodward claimed both explanations could be true, Reyes pushed back: "No, both can't be true. We're not dealing with quantum physics here."

Woodward noted that there was an email that did not have attorneys on it, though he said he did not know whether that would satisfy counsel, and he would not say that the TMP was designed to execute some broader golf course plan.

"There's no universe where all this happens [that way] ... there just isn't," the judge continued. "If you're okay with him answering that question."

Woodward then said he wanted to confer with the Justice Department counsel to make sure he was comfortable discussing the privileged conversations he had just held with the judge, Parloff explained.

Longtime attorney Abbe Lowell offered his understanding of the deliberative process privilege, saying that "privilege disappears if there is any reason to believe that government conduct has occurred."

Attorney-client privilege typically applies between an attorney and their client. When the client is the American government, a difficult question arises over whether invoking the doctrine side-steps open-records laws meant to ensure government transparency. The deliberative process privilege Woodward raised works differently: it shields pre-decisional agency deliberations rather than conversations with lawyers, but courts have treated that shield as vulnerable where there is reason to believe government misconduct occurred — the line Lowell was drawing. The judge asked about the issue, but Lowell said he was only beginning to sort through the research, adding that he thought the matter was much broader than that.

The hearing followed a contentious weekend in which the Trump administration attempted to have Reyes recuse herself from the case, arguing that she had been overly emotional. Recusal asks a judge to step aside over impartiality concerns, and the judge whose removal is sought ordinarily decides the question. The effort did not go over well: in her response, the judge rebutted the argument line by line and refused to step down. With the recusal bid rejected, attention now turns back to the questions Reyes said she wants answered — including who decided when the court was notified of the tree plan — and to whether the government's privilege assertions hold up as the litigation moves forward.