President Donald Trump's role as Kennedy Center chairman undercuts his board's bid to hide evidence in federal court, a legal analyst argued.
Adam Klasfeld of All Rise News broke down the latest filing in Rep. Joyce Beatty's (D-OH) lawsuit against the Trump-installed board in a Tuesday episode of "Legal AF."
Beatty has asked a federal judge to strip the board of presidential communications privilege, which it has invoked to withhold its chairman's communications. Klasfeld said that position collapses because Trump calls the shots as chairman, not just as president.
"For the first time in U.S. history, a president has installed loyalists on the Kennedy Center's board in an effort to appoint himself as chairman," Klasfeld said. "All so he can call the shots and transform a living memorial to John F. Kennedy into a shrine to himself."
Klasfeld added that the board offers no resistance to Trump. "They're a rubber stamp for his decisions," he said.
Beatty's motion, which Klasfeld read in the episode, calls the government's privilege assertion "sweeping" and says it "appears to be unprecedented."
"Donald Trump is the chair of a nonprofit corporation's board, and his decisions and directions lie at the heart of that board's actions, which in turn are the subject matter of this case," the motion states. "Allowing defendants to hide behind this unwarranted assertion of privilege would obstruct the search for the truth."
Klasfeld said the communications Beatty seeks go to motive. Trump, the board and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have blamed the closure of the center on its dire finances and crumbling structure. But Klasfeld said public tax filings tell a different story.
"Before Trump took over the board, contrary to what Trump has been saying, the Kennedy Center was in good financial health," he said. "It was making millions more in revenue than it was paying in expenses."
Within a week of the takeover, he said, audiences fled, ticket sales were cut in half and artists began canceling. Klasfeld said Beatty contends the closure is "all a ruse to try to hide their embarrassment and their financial mismanagement."
The communications, he said, "go to the issue of what did they know about the changing financial condition of the center and when did they know it."
Klasfeld also questioned the official reason for the closure, a claim that the building is structurally unsound. He noted plaster has fallen from the ceiling before, including in the 1970s, "and the Kennedy Center continued with a performance that night."
"This is about the search for the truth," Klasfeld said.
