President Donald Trump invoked his executive privilege in the lawsuit his administration is facing over the Kennedy Center from Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH).
White House associate counsel Josh Hoyt wrote in a court declaration on Thursday that Trump was declaring his presidential communications privilege for communications, information, and documents requested by Beatty and her lawyers in the lawsuit. This would shield information that Beatty requests from becoming public and shared with her based on the separation of powers.
Hoyt says the privilege applies to “information, documents, and communications shared between the President, his advisors (government and non-government), and Kennedy Center staff, pertaining to the management and operation of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.” He also clarified that it includes communications between his advisers and Kennedy Center staff related to his decision-making on the facility.
The Department of Justice lawyers filed Hoyt’s declaration alongside a response from the Trump administration asking the court to deny a motion from Beatty to compel information related to the White House’s communications with the Kennedy Center. The lawyers wrote that Beatty’s motion to compel is a “fishing expedition” that poses “obvious separation-of-powers concerns.”
Beatty’s lawyers filed the motion to compel after lawyers for Kennedy Center Executive Director Matt Floca invoked the presidential communications privilege during Floca’s testimony. The executive privilege came in response to questions about Floca’s conversations with Trump and executive branch officials, according to court filings.
Now that the Trump administration has invoked the presidential communications privilege, the court can either grant Beatty’s motion to compel and reject the administration’s use of executive privilege or side with the administration’s argument and allow the use of executive privilege in this case, which would block the communications from Beatty.
The back-and-forth is the latest development in the legal saga between the Trump administration and Beatty, an ex officio member of the board, over Trump’s planned construction of the Kennedy Center. Beatty sued the administration over its plans to close the facility for a two-year renovation and its intention to rename the facility after Trump.
The main building of the performing arts center is temporarily closed as the facility examines whether it is safe to reopen to the public in its current condition. The name-change effort has been stalled, as the administration and Kennedy Center board argue Trump should be recognized on the facade for his contributions to the facility and its planned reconstruction, but that it should not be renamed entirely.
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Beatty’s legal team said Trump “improperly” invoked executive privilege in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
“Donald Trump appointed himself as chair of the non-profit board of the Kennedy Center, and is now trying to shield his management by improperly invoking executive privilege,” Beatty’s counsel, Norm Eisen of Democracy Defenders Action and Nathaniel Zelinsky of Washington Litigation Group, said. “We take this incredibly seriously. The Supreme Court has stressed that the government should not invoke executive privilege lightly, but that is precisely what the Department of Justice is doing here. This kind of cover-up is a direct assault on the rule of law.”