Trump Invokes Executive Privilege to Shield Kennedy Center Records From Lawmaker's Lawsuit

The Justice Department has formally invoked executive privilege to block a Democratic member of Congress from obtaining records of President Trump's private conversations about the future of the Kennedy Center, raising an untested legal question about whether presidential secrecy protections extend to Trump's work as chairman of a performing-arts nonprofit's board.

Deputy White House Counsel Joshua Hoyt notified U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper on Wednesday, October 14, of the assertion in a sworn declaration filed in Rep. Joyce Beatty's long-running lawsuit over the center's governance, according to reports by ABC News and CBS News, both confirmed Thursday. It is the broadest privilege claim the administration has made yet in the year-old case, and lawyers for Beatty, an Ohio Democrat, call it unprecedented.

The scope of the claim

The case, Beatty v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-04480, has been before Judge Cooper in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia since Beatty filed suit on December 22, 2025. Hoyt's declaration asserts the presidential communications privilege over conversations between Trump, his advisers "government and non-government," and Kennedy Center staff about the center's management and operations. Named advisers covered by the claim include Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick; the Kennedy Center side includes executive director and chief operating officer Matthew Floca.

The withheld material reaches several live disputes: a paused two-year renovation closure of the center's main building, its finances, the effort to put Trump's name on the facade, and whether the building could eventually be demolished. Earlier this month, according to CBS News, a Justice Department lawyer sitting beside Floca at a deposition repeatedly instructed him not to answer questions about what Trump or Lutnick had told him, citing the same privilege.

How the dispute escalated

Trump became the first sitting president to chair the Kennedy Center's board after a board he had just stacked with his own appointees elected him chairman on February 12, 2025, replacing David Rubenstein and ending the tenure of longtime president Deborah Rutter; Richard Grenell was installed as interim president. The reconstituted board voted last spring both to add Trump's name to the building and to close it for two years of renovation, triggering Beatty's suit.

Cooper ruled in May that the Kennedy Center could not be renamed without an act of Congress and separately blocked the closure plan, finding the board had not adequately weighed the impact on the center's finances and programming. The administration appealed. Workers removed Trump's name from the facade within hours of a court-ordered Friday deadline in mid-June, and, as NPR reported at the time, scaffolding and a tarp have obscured that section of the building ever since, which a center spokesperson attributed to marble and soffit repairs. The board later revived a plan to close the main building again; filings in the case docket show that move was due to take effect no earlier than October 8, pending Cooper's review, and the Justice Department has separately asked him to dissolve his May order. The docket has grown steadily more contentious in recent weeks, including a filing lodged in early October amid the same discovery fight now at the center of the privilege dispute. Neither matter has been decided.

Who is affected

The immediate parties are narrow — Beatty, an ex officio trustee of the center by virtue of her House seat, and the Trump-appointed board she is suing — but the dispute touches a congressionally chartered cultural institution that depends on both federal appropriations and private fundraising, along with its staff, performers, and visiting public, who have been left without a clear timeline for the main building's renovation or the fate of its still-covered facade. Beatty has pressed her case publicly as well; in July she testified at a House Democratic shadow hearing describing what she called the administration's "unlawful" takeover of the venue. More broadly, legal scholars following the case say a ruling could shape how far future presidents can stretch executive privilege to cover roles outside their official government duties, since Trump holds the Kennedy Center chairmanship through a nonprofit board vote rather than any constitutional or statutory office.

Dueling arguments

Justice Department lawyers argue that because federal law lets the president select the center's trustees and advisory committee members, Trump must be able to judge whether those board members are fulfilling their duties, and that his conversations about the center's management are therefore an extension of his official role. They have characterized Beatty's discovery requests as a "fishing expedition" that raises separation-of-powers concerns, while acknowledging, as both ABC and CBS noted, that executive privilege is not absolute and can be overcome by a sufficient showing of need.

"These blanket assertions of executive privilege are both procedurally and substantively improper," Beatty's lawyers wrote, according to CBS News, arguing the privilege cannot shield Trump's actions as chairman of a nonprofit's board, a role they say is distinct from the presidency itself.

Beatty's attorneys have asked Cooper to order the Kennedy Center to turn over the withheld material and to compel answers to the questions blocked during Floca's deposition, contending the administration cannot invoke a governmental privilege to cover decisions made in Trump's capacity as a private board chairman.

What happens next

Judge Cooper has not yet ruled on whether the privilege claim will stand, and no hearing date had been reported as of Thursday evening. His decision will determine whether Beatty's lawyers can obtain the withheld communications and continue questioning Floca and other center officials, and it arrives alongside two other pending matters: the Justice Department's request to dissolve Cooper's May order blocking the renovation closure, and the broader question of when, or whether, the board's latest closure resolution can take effect. Separate appeals of Cooper's earlier rulings remain before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, meaning the privilege fight is likely to be only the latest chapter in a legal battle that has run for the better part of a year without a final resolution in sight.