Trump suffers legal humiliation in new Kennedy Center debacle

President Donald Trump holds a model of an arch monument during a ballroom dinner in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., October 15, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

President Donald Trump is once again being embarrassed before the courts as he attempts to force his name onto the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

[Journalist Michael] Popok reports on new developments in the fight over the Kennedy Center's future and name, as Trump orders his DOJ to refuse to have witnesses answer questions by asserting "executive privilege"!" reported the law affairs news outlets Legal AF and contributor Michael Popok on Sunday. "For the self-proclaimed "most transparent administration in history," the Trump Administration and DOJ certainly spend a lot of time and energy covering their tracks and refusing to answer questions!""

In his decision, Judge Christopher Cooper wrote that "defendants’ persistence in trying to obscure relevant—and indeed, core—discovery is untenable. Defendants hired consultants and told them the two-year period was a fixed window for construction. If the basis for the fixed variable predated the May 29 decision, but underlies Defendants’ most recent decisions, it is obviously relevant and is an appropriate topic of discovery. This example, moreover, is just one illustration of the problem. Time and again, Defendants have taken an impossibly narrow understanding of relevance and have refused to provide discovery on that basis. Defendants’ cramped view of relevance underscores the need for this Court’s relief."

Popok, Legal AF and their fellow contributors Lisa Graves and Karen Friedman Agnifilo echoed that observation in a separate post on Sunday.

"The only thing standing between the Kennedy Center and destruction is Federal Judge Cooper," they wrote. "And he's not allowing Trump to continue to hide the documents and communications that show that Trump is hell bent on destruction at all costs. The Legal AF Podcast explains."

In September, ethics attorney Norm Eisen argued that Trump's determination to rename the Kennedy Center is actually worsening the institution's stability.

"Donald Trump slapped his name on this building, and it drove artists and audiences away and cratered the very successful ongoing operation of the Kennedy Center. He's closing it to cover up the fact of his mismanagement," Eisen explained.

He added, "There's certainly no reason to demolish it."

Insiders believe Trump is seeking a pretext for destroying the Kennedy Center if he does not get his way.

"It's pretty obvious where this is headed," lawyer George Conway — whose wife, Kellyanne Conway, was a top Trump adviser during his first term — argued. "He's saying renovations are needed because the facility is unsafe. But the money for renovations isn't available unless his name goes on the building. Ergo, if his name doesn't go on the building and, as a result, it's not renovated, then it must be demolished for public-safety reasons."

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