At Thursday’s state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping, Donald Trump invited Xi and other guests to tour the White House ballroom site. His administration has argued in court that the project is a national security matter; Trump said it was a year from completion.
The administration made national security a central argument for continuing construction after preservationists sued. Chief Justice John Roberts voted to halt the work, calling it “likely unlawful,” but was outvoted; Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh were among the majority. All three attended the dinner.
The report describes the project as having grown from an event space into an “integrated military complex,” with an underground bunker and bomb shelters, a military hospital, research facilities and top-secret meeting rooms. It also cites the FBI’s assessment that China poses the United States’ most significant counterintelligence threat, including through state-backed hacking, infrastructure penetration and surveillance of dissidents abroad.
