Top Kennedy Center official urged closure due to financial problems, not poor conditions, lawyers argue

By Aleena Fayaz, CNN

(CNN) — Eighteen months after President Donald Trump stepped in to remake the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in his image, a top official worried about the Washington institution’s hemorrhaging finances urged for it to be shut down, according to court documents filed on behalf of the Ohio congresswoman seeking to stop the center from being shuttered.

“She told him we need to get shut and need a unanimous vote,” reads a series of September text messages describing a conversation between the board of trustees Vice Chair Jennifer Fischer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who has been a driving force in the Trump administration’s efforts to renovate the Kennedy Center by, among other things, placing the president’s name on the building. “She said we are broke and borrowed money to pay the bills.”

The tranche of documents filed Friday night on behalf of Rep. Joyce Beatty, an ex-officio board member, seek to undermine the Trump administration’s contention that the $200 million renovation it is pursuing is due to “dangerously dilapidated and decrepit” conditions that require it to be shuttered for two years.

The Kennedy Center referred CNN to the Department of Justice for questions about the filing. CNN has reached out to the DOJ.

A judge in the case has issued a temporary restraining order compelling the center to remain operating while the lawsuit continues, which Kennedy Center officials have done by continuing programming inside a portion of the campus known as the REACH. The Trump administration is seeking to have the judge’s order lifted.

Lawyers for Beatty argued in the Friday filing that she and other trustees never saw an analysis by a contractor that contradicts the case for closing the center for two years over pursuing the renovations in phases. Instead, the lawyers say in a news release accompanying the filing, Trump and his managers appeared to have hidden that information from the board.

According to Beatty’s attorneys, Kennedy Center Director Matt Floca insisted to the venue’s trustees that construction costs would double if the center took a phased approach. He based that assessment on a contractor’s report that used a preliminary estimate of the cost difference. But a revised estimate that was never seen by the board before it approved the building’s closure put that extra cost closer to $41 million, according to the filing.

“The record now confirms that they knew that estimate was wrong,” the attorneys said in the filing about Kennedy Center officials.

Center officials also contended that $257 million appropriated by Congress for the center’s renovations has to be spent by the end of the 2029 fiscal year, when in reality they have until the 2034 fiscal year to spend the money, Beatty’s attorneys argued.

“The court told this Board to do its job. As a trustee, I have a duty to be accountable. Yet Trump and his handpicked management failed to follow the law, hid facts that didn’t fit their narrative, and rubberstamped Trump’s wishes,” Beatty said in the news release. “I have a duty to protect this living memorial to President Kennedy on behalf of the American people. I will keep fighting to do my job, make sure the law is followed, and ensure that Trump cannot tear down the Kennedy Center to satisfy his ego.”

CNN previously reported that the legal saga and wave of cancellations from performers that ensued since Trump became board chairman presented financial challenges for the institution. With the center’s future in limbo, the cultural institution moved the annual Kennedy Center Honors to the Capitol One Arena in downtown DC.

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