Excerpt from The Washington Post | Read the entire story here.
“All they are really doing is putting window dressing on something that is clearly illegal,”
PCJF Executive Director Mara Verheyden-Hilliard
In the end, the Trump-appointed interior secretary, David Bernhardt, relaxed the rules by finding that the venue was appropriate, given the president’s need to communicate with the American people during a “grave time of national crisis.” That finding has been previously reported.
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, the executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice, a progressive group that acquired the documents through a public-records request, said she believes Bernhardt exceeded his authority and allowed Trump to use “the Lincoln Memorial as his stage set.”
“They’re trying to find a way, it looks like, to give him the chamber when there is no legal way to give him the chamber,” she said.
Verheyden-Hilliard’s group often litigates on behalf of those seeking access to public spaces, pressing the government to properly allow free-speech activities and protests along Pennsylvania Avenue and elsewhere.