White House UFC Events Will Proceed After Judge Rules in Trump’s Favor

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Donald Trump’s UFC extravaganza commemorating his 80th birthday as well as America’s 250th, will proceed as planned after a federal judge declined to block the mixed martial arts fights from happening.

U.S. ‌District Judge Amit Mehta ruled against two Virginia residents Friday who filed a last-minute lawsuit arguing that the Trump administration “exceeded its authority for the event.”

The suit, filed by the Public Integrity Project filed on behalf of two Virginia residents, argued the event “violated National Park Service regulations prohibiting sporting events on federal parklands.” In addition, the filing argued that Congress “did not consent to the towering arch overlooking the event space,” and that “no environmental review was conducted before the construction.”

Attorney Brendan Ballou told journalist Scott McFarlane this week that if the fights were allowed to proceed, “these pictures are going into every history textbook and for every high school student for future generations to show the corruption that we have gone through. And so, I think it is worth stopping this and I think it can be stopped because the dignitary, the aesthetic, the symbolic harms of seeing our national monuments misused for for-profit corrupt purposes is going to be impossible to take back, and it’s something that we can still stop.”

In its legal response, the Justice Department argued that the plaintiffs were unlikely to succeed ​with their claims “as they had ​not shown how they would ⁠be harmed by the UFC event.” In addition, the DOJ argued, “There is a history of holding public events on the White House South Lawn.”

The judge agreed with the administration, paving the way for fighter weigh-ins to proceed at the Lincoln Memorial, followed by the actual fights Sunday in an octagonal cage under a 92-foot-tall claw-like structure on the White House’s South Lawn. The administration says it expects some 4,000 spectators for the events.

The tab for the $60 million dollar event is being picked up by UFC head Dana White, whose likeness appears alongside Trump on a commemorative gold coin being sold by the Trump Organization for $12,000.

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