A White House lawyer said President Donald Trump has formally invoked executive privilege in a court battle involving his management of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Joshua Hoyt, deputy assistant to the president and deputy counsel, said in a court filing late Wednesday that at “the president’s direction” he “formally invoked the presidential communications privilege to obtain the information, documents and communications requested by Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, the plaintiff in this case.”
Beatty, an ex-officio board member of the center, has long questioned Trump’s efforts to add his name to the front of the building and his directive that the center close for two years while it is renovated.
She has sought more information about Trump’s role in both matters since he appointed himself to the board last year and was elected chairman by his handpicked board members. In February, Trump directed the center to be closed for renovations in a social media post, and he has since said the renovations would not proceed if his efforts were not “recognized.”
Beatty believes the board’s subsequent vote to close the center was a fait accompli given Trump’s February directive.
Hoyt said in a court filing with the government on Wednesday that invoking executive privilege means Beatty is not entitled to further details about the president’s management of the nonprofit’s board.
He said in a statement that the privilege specifically covers “information, documents and communications shared between the President, his advisors (governmental and non-governmental), and Kennedy Center staff related to the management and operation of the Center.” It also extends to “correspondence with his advisors and/or Kennedy Center staff.”
In a separate filing Wednesday, the Justice Department said Beatty participated in improper “fishing expeditions” and argued that her “pursuit of irrelevant evidence does not justify her extraordinary requests for additional documents and information.”
Beatty’s attorneys claim the Justice Department’s actions were unusual.
“Donald Trump appointed himself chairman of the Kennedy Center’s nonprofit board and is now seeking to protect his management by improperly invoking executive privilege,” attorneys Norm Eisen of Democracy Defenders Action and Nathaniel Zelinsky of the Washington Litigation Group said in a statement.
“The Supreme Court has emphasized that the government should not easily invoke executive privilege, but that is exactly what the Department of Justice did here. This cover-up is a direct attack on the rule of law,” they said.
Justice Department lawyers said in filings earlier this month that Trump would assert executive privilege, but he did not formally do so until Wednesday.
In documents filed on Oct. 6, Beatty’s attorneys said there was no reason to assert the privilege because Trump is a defendant in the case and chairs the center’s board of directors created by Congress, not the president.
The lawyer said that the Kennedy Center does not belong to the administrative department and “does not exercise administrative power.” They added that Trump “voluntarily assumed the ‘ordinary powers and duties of a fiduciary.'”
“Trustee and Board Chairman are not roles that must be filled by the President of the United States and, in fact, have never existed before in the Center’s history. Nor do Kennedy Center staff act like close presidential advisers whose conversations are protected by executive privilege,” the attorneys argued. “The court should not allow defendants to escape their responsibilities as fiduciaries by abusing privileges constructed for purposes other than their status as chairman of the nonprofit entity.”
They added that “allowing defendants to hide behind such unfounded claims of privilege will hinder the search for the truth” and “undermine public confidence in these important proceedings.”
The Justice Department countered that Trump’s involvement with the center was “undoubtedly in his official capacity” because it is the president’s responsibility to appoint board members.
And, government lawyers say, the president will always be the president.
Beatty “argued that executive privilege ‘protects the institution of the President, not the individual who happens to occupy the White House.’” But, as the Supreme Court recently emphasized, the Framers vested “executive power” in one person—“the President of the United States of America.”
Federal Judge Christopher Cooper, who is presiding over the case, has not yet issued an opinion on the issue, but the government’s position conflicts with a ruling he issued this month that allowed Beatty’s team to learn more about the circumstances surrounding a photo of Trump on Air Force One looking at a poster that read “Kennedy Center Demolish.”
The venue was temporarily closed on Sept. 15 for what center officials said was an emergency safety assessment. It has not reopened yet.