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A White House lawyer said President Donald Trump has officially invoked executive privilege in the court fight involving his management of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
In a court filing late Wednesday, Joshua Hoyt, a deputy assistant and deputy counsel to the president, said that at “the direction of the President,” he was “formally invoking the presidential communications privilege with respect to information, documents, and communications requested” by the plaintiff in the case, Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio.
Beatty, an ex officio board member of the center, has been challenging Trump’s efforts to add his name to the front of the building and his directive that the center be shuttered for two years while it’s renovated.
She’s been seeking more information about Trump’s role in both matters, since he named himself to the board last year and was voted chairman by his handpicked board members. In February, Trump directed the center to be closed for renovations in a social media post and has since said those renovations won’t proceed if he doesn’t get “recognition” for his efforts.
Beatty contends the board’s subsequent votes to close the center were a fait accompli, given Trump’s February directive.
In the administration’s court filing Wednesday, Hoyt said the executive privilege invocation means Beatty is not entitled to any more details about the president’s management of the nonprofit board.
He said in a declaration that privilege specifically covers “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 center. It also extends to communications “to or from his advisors and/or Kennedy Center staff.”
In a separate filing Wednesday, the Justice Department said Beatty was engaged in an improper “fishing expedition,” arguing her “pursuit of irrelevant evidence does not justify her extraordinary request” for additional documents and information.
Beatty’s attorneys asserted it was the DOJ that was acting in extraordinary fashion.
“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,” the lawyers, Norm Eisen of Democracy Defenders Action and Nathaniel Zelinsky of Washington Litigation Group, said in a statement.
“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,” they said.
Lawyers for the DOJ had said in a filing earlier this month that Trump would be claiming executive privilege, but he did not formally do so until Wednesday.
In an Oct. 6 filing, Beatty’s attorneys said there were no grounds to claim the privilege, since Trump is a defendant in the case as chairman of the congressionally created center’s board, and not as president.
The attorneys said the Kennedy Center is not part of the executive branch “and does not exercise executive power.” They added that Trump “voluntarily assumed the ‘usual powers and obligations of a trustee.’”
“Trustee and board chair are not roles that must be performed by the President of the United States and, indeed, never have been in the Center’s history before now. Nor are the staff at the Kennedy Center anything like the close presidential advisers whose conversations executive privilege protects,” the lawyers argued. “The Court should not permit Defendants to evade accountability as trustees by abusing a privilege constructed for other purposes, not the chairmanship of this non-profit entity.”
“Allowing Defendants to hide behind this unwarranted assertion of privilege would obstruct the search for the truth” and “undermine public confidence in these important proceedings,” they added.
The Justice Department countered that Trump’s involvement with the center “is undoubtedly in his official capacity,” since it’s the president’s duty to appoint board members.
And, the government lawyers said, the president is always the president.
Beatty “argues that executive privilege ‘protects the institution of the Presidency, not the individual who happens to occupy the White House.’ But, as the Supreme Court reinforced recently, the Framers vested ‘the executive Power’ in one person—‘a President of the United States of America.’”
The federal judge presiding over the case, Christopher Cooper, has not yet weighed in on the issue, but the administration’s stance conflicts with a ruling he issued this month allowing Beatty’s team to learn more about the circumstances surrounding a photo of Trump on Air Force One viewing a poster that read “Kennedy Center DEMOLISH.”
The venue was closed Sept. 15 on a temporary basis for what center officials described as emergency safety assessments. It has not reopened.
