Three former officials — speaking anonymously, of course — told the Washington Post that there is a classified, nuclear-hardened bunker buried more than 60 feet beneath the White House complex, built during the Obama administration. The facility can shelter the president and dozens of top aides for multiple weeks. It was built to withstand a nuclear blast. Its existence had not been previously reported.
The reason they told the Washington Post? To help stop the Trump White House Ballroom.
The administration’s legal argument in the ongoing lawsuit over the $600 million ballroom project includes the national security necessity of building secure, hardened facilities on White House grounds. Former officials who oppose the project decided that the best way to undercut that argument was to disclose the existence of a classified presidential shelter to a newspaper — and hope nobody notices that leaking the specifics of presidential security infrastructure to the Washington Post is considerably more dangerous than building a ballroom.
To its credit, the Post says it withheld some details “in order to not compromise sensitive White House security protocols.” The paper also just disclosed that there is a secret nuclear-hardened presidential bunker buried 60 feet under the White House, that it can house dozens of people for weeks, and that it was completed under a specific administration. The details they withheld were apparently more sensitive than all of that.
Let’s be direct about what actually happened here. Someone with knowledge of classified White House security infrastructure — an “element of the secretive facility, some of which have not been previously reported” — chose to disclose it to a newspaper specifically to influence an active federal lawsuit. The motive was political. The information was classified. The vehicle was the Washington Post, which is about as anti-Trump an outlet as it gets.
This is the same Washington Post that published false stories about Kash Patel being fired. The same paper that ran the fabricated Camp David confrontation between Trump and Pete Hegseth. The same paper that Trump called “the Washington Compost” and accused of being a mouthpiece for the deep state.
And now that paper has published classified information about the depth, nuclear hardening, and occupancy capacity of the presidential shelter — sourced to anonymous former officials who disagreed with an ongoing construction project.
Matt Vespa put it plainly: “This is borderline treason.” He’s right to be outraged. Subpoenas should be issued. The people who leaked classified presidential security infrastructure to a newspaper deserve to be identified, and the Post’s editors who made the publication decision deserve to explain themselves before Congress.
Reagan was shot outside the Washington Hilton. An assassin tried to kill Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner this spring. Iran has publicly displayed assassination threat banners at the Supreme Leader’s funeral. And three former officials just told the world exactly how deep the president’s fallback shelter is.
All to stop a ballroom that is sorely needed. And why? Because Trump wants it. This is one story where there should be subpoenas issued.
