Administration withholds Kennedy Center texts and emails under executive privilege, court filing shows

By Delphine Brooks

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is withholding nine categories of Kennedy Center records under the presidential communications privilege, including about 180 text messages between the center’s executive director and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, according to a privilege log described in a federal court filing in Rep. Joyce Beatty’s lawsuit over the center’s management and planned two-year closure.

The administration’s position is that the president’s dealings with the center are official acts that the privilege protects. In an Oct. 14 declaration, White House deputy counsel Joshua Hoyt said that “at the direction of the President” he was formally invoking the privilege over communications “between the President, his advisors (government and non-government), and Kennedy Center staff, pertaining to the management and operation” of the center, NBC News reported. The Justice Department argued that the president’s involvement with the center “is undoubtedly in his official capacity,” because appointing its trustees is a presidential duty, and called Beatty’s request for more documents a “fishing expedition.”

Beatty, an Ohio Democrat who sits on the center’s board as an ex officio trustee, argues that President Donald Trump is a defendant as chairman of a congressionally chartered nonprofit board, not as president, and that the privilege does not apply. Her lawyers set out what the log lists in a notice filed Oct. 25 in Beatty v. Trump, No. 25-cv-4480, before U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper.

What the log lists

According to the notice, the government served the log on Friday, Oct. 23, the last day of the extended discovery period. All of the withheld items are dated between April 23 and Sept. 15, 2026. The government also asserts attorney-client and work-product protection over parts of three entries. The notice describes the entries this way:

• A July 30 email from Matthew Floca, a defendant in the case and the center’s executive director and chief operating officer, to two Commerce Department advisers, later sent to an Executive Office of the President employee, with a “summary document” following an in-person meeting with the president that day.
• A June 17 item about presidential correspondence, and a 17-email thread from April to June about planning for the Kennedy Center Honors.
• A May 29 email, sent the day Cooper issued his preliminary injunction, with an executive memo on operations, statutory duties and litigation risks, along with an item about the center’s financial outlook.
• Scheduling messages for the July 30 meeting with the president.
• Nineteen text messages between Floca and Trump aide Natalie Harp from June 18 to Sept. 15, 11 of them sent on Sept. 15, the day of the board’s third vote to close the building.
• About 180 text messages between Floca and Lutnick from May 30 to Sept. 15.

Beatty’s lawyers, Norm Eisen of Democracy Defenders Action and Nathaniel Zelinsky of Washington Litigation Group, wrote that the government’s own descriptions say the messages “reflect advice from” Trump and reflect his “deliberations,” and that the material bears on whether the board’s votes “reflected independent judgment or again ratified a predetermined result.” They asked Cooper to order the records produced before he rules on the board’s motion to lift his injunction. Beatty has a separate motion to compel pending on the privilege question.

How the case got here

Cooper issued a preliminary injunction in May that blocked an earlier board vote to close the main building, finding the board had likely breached its fiduciary duty by relying on “an insufficient, one-sided presentation of information.” The board voted again on Aug. 13 and Sept. 15 to close the building for about two years for renovations funded by Congress, and it has asked Cooper to lift the injunction and grant it summary judgment, citing a project plan by the real estate firm JLL and a cost analysis by Delta Consulting Group, according to an Oct. 9 order by Cooper.

Separately, the center’s executive director closed the main building after part of a ceiling collapsed on Sept. 4, citing safety concerns, the order says. Cooper wrote that the emergency closure is not covered by his injunction. The building has not reopened, and this year’s Kennedy Center Honors will be held Dec. 7 at Capital One Arena, CBS News reported.

The Inquisitor is seeking comment from the White House, the Kennedy Center, the Justice Department, the Commerce Department and Beatty’s office.