Rep. Joyce Beatty said in a court filing attempting to block changes to the Kennedy Center that the Trump administration is threatening to destroy the fabled performing arts center if it doesn’t get its way.
“In plain English, Defendants have not-so-subtly said: ‘What a nice Kennedy Center you have here. What a shame should something happen to it,’” Beatty’s lawyers wrote in a motion Wednesday. “This is a breathtaking assault on the rule of law. It is delusional. And it must stop.”
Beatty, an Ohio Democrat and an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees, said in her motion that Trump’s team is misleading the court about the financial losses at the center and, in fact, it’s Trump’s actions that have caused the drop in patronage and donations.
The filing is part of an effort to halt Trump from emblazoning his name on the center, which was blocked by a federal judge. The center’s board, installed with Trump allies, then voted on Aug. 13 to shut down the facility for up to two years to carry out a $250 million renovation project.
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The board also voted to inscribe a tribute to the president — “Renovated and Restored by President Donald J. Trump” — on the front of the building and rename the front area as “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.” In a court filing Monday, Justice Department lawyers said the changes are necessary to stave off more serious measures that could include demolishing the center.
Beatty’s legal team said Wednesday that Trump’s lawyers “consciously chose to play a dangerous game of chicken with the law. They voted to defy the Court’s decision and restore Donald Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center. They refused to wait for the Court to rule, manufacturing an unnecessary fire drill. And now they have threatened the destruction of the Kennedy Center, a sacred memorial to a fallen President, all in the name of one man’s vanity.”
Beatty’s lawyers also wrote that the Trump administration has not disputed that adding Trump’s name to the building — which was taken off but tarped over from public view — may have “irrevocably damaged the Center’s historic marble facade.”
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