In a lawsuit filed against the Trump administration by a pair of Virginia residents who want President Donald Trump’s UFC birthday bash to be stopped, an administration official revealed a strange detail about the impending festivities.
According to a declaration filed in court Wednesday by Marisa Richardson, chief of the National Mall and Memorial Parks Division of Permits Management, the UFC intends to have “each participant in the UFC event (i.e. fighters) enter the Lincoln Memorial chamber via elevator from a lower level, each accompanied by a child.”
“Each fighter and accompanying child will be filmed walking through the chamber and descending the steps to the press conference area,” Richardson said.
Who the children are or why they will be attending was not described. Neither the White House nor the UFC immediately returned requests for comment about the detail.
The lawsuit to halt the tournament was filed by Virginia residents Susan Douglas, a former federal employee and activist organizer, and Paul Romano, a retired Air Force sergeant and Vietnam War veteran. They say the event is a “deeply corrupt” money-making venture for the president. “Sponsorship packages,” for example, cost up to $1.5 million per person, and financial disclosures show Trump personally invested as much as $50,000 in TKO, the company that owns the UFC, two weeks after the fight was announced.
Seating and “The Octagon” fighting enclosure for the upcoming UFC fight that President Donald Trump will host as part of the 250th anniversary of the United States is seen on the South Lawn of the White House during a media preview on June 11.
SAUL LOEB via Getty Images
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta is overseeing the litigation and is expected to issue a ruling Thursday.
A White House spokesperson told HuffPost the lawsuit is “obstructionist, baseless, and dilatory” and was “brought simply to prevent President Trump from hosting what will undoubtedly go down as one of the most historic sporting events in our Nation’s history during our semiquincentennial celebration.”
Brendan Ballou, an attorney with Public Integrity Project representing Douglas and Romano, described the event in court filings Thursday as a “volcano of corruption.”
“Such a volcano of corruption, if allowed to go forward, will mark an inflection point in American history. The images it generates will one day appear in the history books — and not in the chapters about times remembered fondly,” he wrote.
Romano and Douglas have asked Mehta to stop the National Parks Service from using the South Lawn. They allege that the Trump administration originally said it wouldn’t use the physical chamber of the Lincoln Memorial for fighter “walk-outs” but a section of the monument known as the “approach” — but that appears to have changed.
In Richardson’s declaration filed Wednesday, she revealed: ”UFC/TKO intends to have each participant in the UFC event (i.e., fighters) enter the Lincoln Memorial chamber via elevator from a lower level, each accompanied by a child. Each fighter and accompanying child will be filmed walking through the chamber and descending the steps to the press conference area.
The presence of children at the notoriously violent sport strikes a somewhat unusual chord. It is normal in soccer, however. The World Cup has done it for years, with professional players walking hand in hand with kids to the field before a big match.
