Inset: President Donald Trump speaks outside the White House’s Oval Office on Monday, April 13, 2026, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon). Background: Workers stand on scaffolding beside signage for the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., on June 12, 2026 (Photo by Olivier Douliery/Abaca/Sipa USA – Sipa via AP Images).
President Donald Trump appointed himself chairman of the Kennedy Center’s nonprofit board, allegedly added his name to the institution, threatened to tear down the building after an order directed that name be removed, and is now invoking sweeping executive privilege to resist discovery, according to a court filing by a member of Congress.
Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat and the only Kennedy Center trustee to sue over Trump’s plans for the arts institution, told U.S. District Judge Christopher “Casey” Cooper that the Justice Department’s “unprecedented” privilege claims are preventing her from obtaining key evidence. Beatty argued that the Trump administration is effectively controlling what information becomes part of the case.
Several weeks earlier, the judge—who was appointed by former President Barack Obama—authorized Beatty to seek information about a “placard” that appeared to say “‘Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.’” Trump was photographed examining the sign aboard Air Force One.
Beatty has also requested a “construction plan” and a PowerPoint presentation distributed to trustees 48 hours before a board meeting that led to another “temporary” closure of the center. Officials cited “significant safety hazards” as the reason for shutting the facility.
Those requests have met what Beatty described in a Monday court filing as a “stone wall of executive privilege.”
“Chairman Trump personally announced the decision to shutter the Kennedy Center on February 1; the Board’s initial vote to close was obviously a mere formality, as Trump himself made clear at the time,” Beatty’s filing states. “Thus, even by Defendants’ account, Chairman Trump was intimately involved in making that decision. And he has continued to closely control the Kennedy Center since.”
Beatty said the administration’s position leaves her little choice but to seek judicial intervention. Without the court’s involvement, she warned, the Kennedy Center defendants could “curate the record and hide the truth from the Court.” She said understanding the board’s decision—and determining whether officials manipulated the process or acted in bad faith—requires knowing what guidance and instructions management received from Trump.
“The Department now refuses to provide any documents held by the Kennedy Center even touching on communications between the Chairman and management and intends to block all inquiry into those communications in depositions,” the filing states. Beatty argued that the broad privilege claim is especially improper because Trump serves as chairman of a nonprofit board, and his decisions and directives are central to the board actions at issue in the lawsuit. Shielding those communications, she said, would impede fact-finding, undermine the court’s discovery order and damage public confidence in the proceedings.
Read the full filing here.
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