President Donald Trump listens during a cabinet meeting, Friday, July 31, 2026, at Camp David, the presidential retreat, near Thurmont, Md. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin).
After the DOJ weighed in and demanded the quick dismissal of an “ambitiously novel” lawsuit, an urban farm, Miami residents, and a college student say their challenge of President Donald Trump’s “library” can — and must — survive.
The DOJ had recently cast as absurd and “illogical” the move by the plaintiffs in the case of Sistrunk Seeds Inc. v. Trump to rely on the Domestic Emoluments Clause, with the plaintiffs claiming that Florida Republicans unconstitutionally gifted $300 million worth of a public college’s land to Trump and the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation.
Dunn’s Overtown Farm, a nonprofit farm and market in Miami cofounded by historian and psychology professor Marvin Dunn, filed the lawsuit in May with student Carmen Salcedo, noting that the president said the “library” to be built on the Miami-Dade College parcel at issue is “most likely going to be a hotel[.]”
As the DOJ argued that the lawsuit should be promptly tossed for lack of standing, it claimed the “theory” of the case — if accepted — would mean George Washington “openly violated the Constitution only a few years after presiding over its drafting” and former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden did the same centuries later, by owning “U.S. Treasury notes and bills during their tenure” and accruing interest “from the United States” in office.
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The government implored U.S. District Judge Rodolfo Armando Ruiz II, a Trump appointee, to bring discovery to a halt until he rules on the motion to dismiss in favor of the president and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The plaintiffs, noting Eric Trump is one of three named trustees of the Trump Library Foundation, argued that the Constitution is clear — that Trump and all other presidents are “prohibit[ed] […] from receiving emoluments directly or constructively, through persons such as his immediate family members or corporate entities that he controls formally or informally.”
In an attempt to shore up standing and move forward to discovery, the plaintiffs countered Tuesday that the DOJ cannot win an “automatic, mandatory, and sweeping stay of all discovery and proceedings” bolstered by assumptions about their strategy. The response in opposition referenced Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” and “Much Ado About Nothing” while claiming the defendants are “in a panic” and protest too much.
“Without knowing what discovery Plaintiffs even intend to serve, Defendants have run to the Court in a panic, asking it to rush a ruling on their request for a sweeping stay of discovery (and all proceedings) based on a speculative and self-serving assessment of Plaintiffs’ intentions,” the filing said. “Along the way, they malign Plaintiffs’ 241-paragraph Complaint as ‘threadbare,’ and falsely insinuate that Dr. Marvin Dunn, the director of Plaintiff Sistrunk Seeds Inc., has been out ‘to make discovery unpleasant’ since he filed a different suit, represented by different attorneys, nearly a year ago.”
“This is sound and fury. It signifies nothing,” the plaintiffs went on, stating they “intend to serve only limited discovery focused on a single Defendant, the Trump Library Foundation, while the Motions to Dismiss remain pending[.]”
That renders Trump and the state defendants’ “immunity-defense handwaving […] much ado about nothing,” because the Trump Library Foundation “does not assert immunity at all,” the plaintiffs asserted.
“The only thing novel about this case is the factual allegations, and unprecedented circumstances often warrant unprecedented litigation. It is not every day that a state gifts land for the purported construction of a presidential library after paving the way for the President to actually do whatever he wants with it, and then the President openly expresses his intent to build a for-profit hotel on the land, concretely injuring Plaintiffs,” the filing said.
The post Opponents of Trump’s Miami ‘library’ ask judge to tune out president’s ‘sound and fury’ and turn down ‘sweeping stay of all discovery’ first appeared on Law & Crime.
