Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
A Washington landmark that draws millions of visitors every year has become the unlikely stage for a constitutional tug-of-war.
With the Kennedy Center’s main building dark and its board under new leadership, a court case over who ordered the shutdown has pulled a Democratic lawmaker and the Trump administration into a dispute that now turns on executive privilege.
Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, a plaintiff suing over President Donald Trump’s handling of the venue, told the court on Monday that Justice Department lawyers are refusing to turn over documents on how the shutdown was decided.
Her filing accuses the department of using a sweeping privilege claim to block discovery.
Beatty’s lawyers argue the position is legally unsound because Trump’s role as the center’s board chairman is distinct from his role as president.
The filing calls the Justice Department’s stance “plainly inappropriate.”
What is being withheld
According to the motion, the Justice Department has refused to produce core financial records for fiscal years 2025 and 2026, communications between Trump and Kennedy Center management, and information about two separate threats by Trump to close or demolish the building.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who is handling the case, had previously allowed Beatty’s team to seek discovery about those threats. The filing argues the department is treating any contact between the president and anyone at all as off-limits.
“It is simply not true, as the Department of Justice now seems to believe, that any communications that the President has with anyone are per se privileged,” Beatty’s lawyers wrote in the motion.
A chairman, not a president
Legal commentators have questioned whether executive privilege can apply at all when the communications involve a federally chartered nonprofit rather than the executive branch itself.
Adam Klasfeld of All Rise News, in an analysis cited by Raw Story, argued the claim fails on its own terms because Trump is operating as a board chairman giving directions to center staff.
Beatty’s motion makes the same point: “Donald Trump is the chair of a nonprofit corporation’s board, and his decisions and directions lie at the heart of that board’s actions, which in turn are the subject matter of this case.”
Beatty’s team is pressing the argument that the privilege doctrine was never meant to cover a president’s private-capacity directions to a cultural institution he happens to chair.
How the Kennedy Center got here
Trump ousted the Kennedy Center’s previous leadership shortly after returning to office in 2025 and installed a new board that named him chairman.
In March 2026, the board voted to close the main building for roughly two years and installed Matt Floca as executive director.
An immediate closure was approved on September 15, 2026, after a ceiling collapse earlier that month. The board cited a Delta Consulting Group assessment and Floca’s own memorandum in declaring the main building unsafe for continued occupancy.
About $257 million in restricted congressional funding is available for the renovation.
Trump has publicly tied the project to his legal fight over whether his name can be placed on the venue, which Judge Cooper ruled in May 2026 violated the center’s founding law.
Discovery in Beatty’s case is scheduled to close on October 9, 2026. The judge has not yet ruled on the privilege dispute.
