President Donald Trump invoked executive privilege to shield his Kennedy Center records as the White House examines claims that a multimillion-dollar donation went missing.
White House deputy counsel Joshua Hoyt formally asserted the privilege in a declaration filed Wednesday in a federal lawsuit brought by Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH) over the crusade to include Trump's name on the building.
Hoyt’s claim covers the fundraising efforts of the board that runs the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, even as the White House reviews an alleged donation that never reached the center, Axios reported.
In a headline, The New Republic called the move Trump’s “nuclear option” to hide records from a judge.
The withheld records cover Trump’s push to close the center, its finances, the effort to put his name on the building and whether it could be demolished.
Trump has moved to invoke privilege for communications with his advisers and Kennedy Center staff about the center’s “management and operation,” Hoyt wrote. Trump also wants to extend it to advisers outside the government and even to talks that did not include the president.
The claim also blocks answers to certain questions asked in depositions, or sworn interviews, of Kennedy Center Executive Director Matthew Floca and another witness, the declaration says. That includes communications involving Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that “relayed presidential decision-making.”
Hoyt wrote that the claim rests on Trump’s power to appoint the center’s trustees and members of its Advisory Committee on the Arts, which helps the board raise money.
“The President must familiarize himself with current and planned cultural activities, along with the Board’s fundraising efforts, to ensure that the committee members he designates are well-suited to meeting the challenges facing the Kennedy Center,” he wrote.
“The President’s communications in furtherance of these duties overlap with the President’s duties as Chairman of the Board,” Hoyt wrote, adding that staffers would be "chilled" if the privilege was not invoked.
Taken together, the passages stretch a shield built for candid presidential advice to cover arts center management. Trump is the first sitting president to chair the center’s board, which elected him last year.
Beatty, who sits on the center’s board, sued in December to block the board’s push to rename the center for Trump and close it. Her lawyers have accused the Justice Department of “improperly asserting a blanket privilege in an unprecedented fashion."
Justice Department lawyers accused Beatty of a “fishing expedition” in a separate filing.
Trump directed his White House counsel to look into the donation claim, which former U.S. Attorney Alina Habba raised in the Oval Office last Friday, according to Axios. She told Trump that former Kennedy Center President Ric Grenell failed to deposit a donation her billionaire husband, Turhan Mildon, made a year ago.
“Absurd. I’ve never asked for one cent to be sent somewhere else pretending it was for the Kennedy Center, and I’ve never received any payment from him at all,” Grenell said in a statement to Axios.
Kennedy Center staff searched late last year for a contribution they thought was $6 million but couldn't find it, an official told Axios. The center’s records showed Mildon owed only a $270,000 pledge, which he paid Tuesday.
The center’s finances have collapsed since Trump took control, The Washington Post reported last month, finding it borrowed everything its bank would lend and wrote off pledges from donors who stopped paying.
“POTUS doesn’t want to deal with this. Of course, he’s concerned. But if there is missing money, this is a big, big problem,” another administration official told Axios.
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