The push to shut down the Kennedy Center is a cover story meant to hide financial mismanagement tied to President Donald Trump, an attorney said.
In a Friday episode of Bulwark Takes, Nathaniel Zelinsky argued that Trump's demanded renaming and shutdown are a tell for a greater problem the president caused. Zelinsky is the lead counsel for Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH) in her legal fight over the future of the Kennedy Center.
"We think that the real reason they need to shut down or want to shut down is to hide the financial mismanagement that is the direct result of his name going on the Kennedy Center," Zelinsky said. "So we think these two things, the renaming and the shutdown, are intimately linked."
The claim now has a deadline attached. This week, Judge Christopher "Casey" Cooper granted Beatty's team expedited discovery into the shutdown and any demolition plans, meaning the internal records behind the closure are set to become evidence.
Cooper also rejected Trump's latest workaround for putting his name on the building, which would have branded it as "endowed by Donald Trump" or "restored and renovated by Donald Trump." The judge, Zelinsky said, called it "linguistic gymnastics" that "doesn't get around his opinion and it doesn't get around the law."
The fight escalated after Trump was photographed aboard Air Force One studying a poster reading "Kennedy Center demolished," and after he told pool reporters, "If my name doesn't go up there, we might have to demolish this thing."
Cooper responded by ordering 30 days' notice before any demolition or change in the project's scope.
"It means that at least as a legal matter, Donald Trump can't do what he did to the East Wing," Zelinsky said. "He can't just show up, wreck the thing, and move on."
Zelinsky described Trump as "just grotesquely fixated on putting his name on a memorial to a slain president who gave the last full measure of devotion in the line of duty."