Lawyers for a Democratic lawmaker who is suing to block plans to shutter the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for renovations have cited internal documents to argue that the closure is intended to mask the center’s decline under President Trump’s stewardship.
In a court filing on Friday night, lawyers for Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio point to records that they say demonstrate that officials overstated the cost of keeping the center open during renovations and hid that the closure was really necessitated by its financial collapse under Mr. Trump.
Artists and patrons have fled from the center since Mr. Trump took control of its operations in early 2025 as chairman of the board, which is packed with loyalists who later voted to affix his name to the building’s exterior. The president has said the center must be closed for two years to allow for a $257 million renovation project that will restore what he has called a “dilapidated” building and pave the way to larger audiences and a brighter financial future.
Ms. Beatty, an ex officio member of the center’s board, has argued that trustees voted to close the center under financial pressure and out of fealty to the president.
In one instance, Ms. Beatty’s filing cites a text message from Donna Arduin Kauranen, the center’s former chief financial officer, in which she recounts being briefed on a conversation between two allies of the president: Jennifer Fischer, the board’s vice chair, and Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce who is helping manage the center.
In the message, sent to another Kennedy Center manager on Sept. 10, Ms. Arduin Kauranen wrote that Ms. Fischer had told Mr. Lutnick, “We need to get shut and need a unanimous vote.”
“She said we are broke and borrowed money to pay the bills,” Ms. Arduin Kauranen added, referring to Ms. Fischer.
An internal financial document from September that was provided to Ms. Beatty’s legal team projected that the center would run out of cash before the end of January.
In the court filing, lawyers for Ms. Beatty, Nathaniel Zelinsky and Norm Eisen, accused the Kennedy Center’s managers of carrying out a “sham process” by withholding materials from the board that did not support its agenda.
“Defendants are shuttering the Kennedy Center to hide the ongoing mismanagement of this once vibrant institution and to placate its current chairman,” they wrote in the filing.
The Kennedy Center declined to comment, referring questions to the Justice Department, which is representing it in court. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Justice Department lawyers said in a recent court filing that the board had sufficient information — including assessments by independent firms — to decide the “prudent path forward to address the center’s severe structural deficiencies.”
“The information before the board,” the department’s lawyers wrote, “made emphatically clear that complete closure of the main building, rather than phased closure, was the only responsible option.”
So far, the center has been blocked from moving forward with its proposed closure.
Judge Christopher R. Cooper of Federal District Court in Washington found that the board had been “derelict” in failing to consider other options before voting in March to approve the president’s plan. Ahead of that vote, Mr. Trump acknowledged that the decision had been preordained, saying in public remarks that “it’s a little late for the board because we’ve already announced it.”
After that initial vote, the center asked the two outside firms to weigh in on the impact of a partial closure on construction costs. The board subsequently voted twice more to close the center’s main building, but the judge has yet to rule on whether to allow the plan to proceed.
In their filing, Ms. Beatty’s lawyers highlighted that the board was never shown an updated cost analysis from one of the firms, a construction management company. The report indicated that the expense of keeping the center open during renovations was only a small fraction of what the other firm had projected. Officials focused on the more expensive estimate in making the case to the board for closure.
The center’s managers have defended the full shutdown as the most fiscally prudent option, and the best for protecting employees and visitors. Since mid-September, the center’s main building has been closed to the public in what officials have described as a temporary closure necessitated by “acute risks to public safety.” A smaller annex has been kept open for limited programming and would remain accessible during a longer-term closure.
While Kennedy Center leaders have acknowledged that the institution is facing severe financial troubles, its reasoning for the planned closure has focused on renovation needs, which they say include outdated equipment, degrading infrastructure and deteriorating exterior marble.
Mr. Trump has made the Kennedy Center a centerpiece of his efforts to transform Washington’s cultural landscape. After he took over the Kennedy Center, promising to rid it of “woke” programming, ticket sales plummeted. They sank further when his name was added to the building’s facade. Ms. Beatty sued over the name change, and Judge Cooper ordered the new signage removed in June.
In September, Mr. Trump threatened to cancel the renovation plan if an appellate court did not allow his name to be restored to the building. He was later photographed reviewing a poster board titled “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.”
The two outside firms, JLL and Delta Consulting Group, were asked to study the financial impact of a full two-year closure of the center’s main building versus a phased approach over a longer period of time that would allow for parts of the building to remain open to the public. Delta projected that the phased approach would cost about $560 million — more than double the $257 million allotted by Congress.
But JLL estimated that a phased approach would cost only about $41 million more than the allotted funding. The Justice Department has acknowledged in court papers that trustees were not provided with that report.
Ms. Beatty’s lawyers also contend that Delta’s analysis was rushed. Initially, the filing says, Delta was given 60 days to produce its final report. But then the firm was asked to present its recommendation to the board less than three weeks after it had started work.
The filing also argues that while Delta’s analysis was pronounced independent, communications indicate that the center’s executive director, Matt Floca, was involved in shaping a presentation given to the board in August.
“I want to tweak a few things,” Mr. Floca texted Delta employees on Aug. 10, a few days before a board meeting. “Not there yet unfortunately.”
One communication cited in the filing appeared to show the pressure that the financial losses were putting on Ms. Arduin Kauranen. This year, the center received a much-needed boost of $17.5 million, raised by a foundation named after Mr. Trump. But Justice Department lawyers have noted in court papers that the foundation’s bylaws stipulate it must take back money from the center if Mr. Trump’s name is prohibited from being on the building.
In a message to Mr. Floca on Sept. 5, Ms. Arduin Kauranen warned that if the center was forced to return those funds, it would need to inform employees that “they are immediately furloughed.” Ms. Arduin Kauranen resigned from her position less than two weeks later.
Ms. Beatty’s lawyers have been seeking to obtain dozens more text messages and emails sent among White House aides and center managers. But the Justice Department has refused to turn over those communications, citing executive privilege.
Judge Cooper is expected to weigh in on the dispute next week. Lawyers for Ms. Beatty have argued that the president cannot cite executive privilege in this setting because the protections afforded the president under the Constitution do not apply to his actions as chairman of a nonprofit arts center.
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