The Justice Department and lawyers for a Democratic congresswoman suing the Kennedy Center tangled in federal court on Tuesday over whether the Trump administration can legally withhold communications related to the president’s management of the arts institution.
Mr. Trump took over as chairman of the Kennedy Center at the start of his second term, making it a centerpiece of his efforts to rid Washington’s cultural institutions of what he has described as liberal leanings. He announced in February that the center would close for two years of renovations, and he has pushed for his name to occupy a prominent place on the building, which is a memorial to President Kennedy.
Lawyers for Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio, who is an ex officio board member at the center, have sought dozens of text messages and emails involving close aides of Mr. Trump. They have described the exchanges as critical evidence in their lawsuit seeking to halt the two-year closure of the center for a $257 million renovation project.
In recent weeks, the legal battle has diverged into a fight over whether Mr. Trump should be granted executive privilege in his Kennedy Center dealings to protect his ability to speak candidly and confidentially with aides.
The Justice Department has blocked access to communications involving aides such as Natalie Harp, a chief gatekeeper to the president, as well as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who is helping Mr. Trump oversee the center. The exchanges are described in court papers as intended to reflect private deliberations by the president and his staff.
In the hearing at Federal District Court in Washington on Tuesday, Nathaniel Zelinsky, a lawyer for Ms. Beatty, argued that executive privilege did not extend to Mr. Trump’s role as chairman of the center’s board.
“That would be a recipe to basically say anything in the president’s life is subject to executive privilege,” Mr. Zelinsky said.
William Jankowski, a lawyer for the Justice Department, said the president had an official role at the Kennedy Center that was assigned by Congress and involved appointing members of the board. That provision put the arts venue in the scope of Mr. Trump’s executive duties, he argued.
Judge Christopher R. Cooper, who is overseeing the case, signaled that he may ultimately decide that some communications are protected while others are not. The key question, he said, is which “hat” Mr. Trump was wearing in the context of the specific exchange: president of the United States or chairman of the board?
If the discussion revolves around core policy or politics related to the Kennedy Center, Judge Cooper suggested that the Justice Department may have an argument that executive privilege applies. If Mr. Trump is discussing the “color of the carpets” or “the ins and outs of the HVAC system,” the judge said, “that’s a tough argument.”
By taking over the Kennedy Center, Mr. Trump has established a relationship with the institution unlike that of any other president. A builder by trade, he has weighed in regularly on the minutiae of a facility that he has called “dilapidated,” helping to secure $257 million from Congress for renovations.
The board, composed mostly of Mr. Trump’s loyalists, voted to add his name to the building’s exterior in December in recognition of that effort.
In response to the lawsuit by Ms. Beatty, Judge Cooper ordered Mr. Trump’s name removed in June and temporarily blocked the plan for a two-year closure, ruling that the board had not given it proper scrutiny.
The Justice Department has been working to persuade him to change his mind after the board voted twice more to close. The center is “in a state of limbo that we’re trying to resolve as quickly as possible,” Mr. Jankowski said.
Ms. Beatty’s suit argues that trustees have continued to ignore their responsibility to the institution, acting out of fealty to the president and using the closure to deflect from the financial and artistic decline of the institution under Mr. Trump’s leadership.
The Kennedy Center’s main building has been off limits to the public since September, in what officials have described as a temporary closure intended to protect the public from crumbling infrastructure. A smaller nearby annex has been kept open for limited programming.
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