Beatty Seeks Release of Sealed Kennedy Center Renovation Documents

The plans were issued just two days before the board convened to shutter the facility, the Tuesday court filing says.

Workers install Donald J. Trump's name above the current signage on the Kennedy Center.

Attorneys said the administration intentionally obscured the documents from the public without ever filing a formal motion to seal or explaining to the court why the records must remain secret. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

Rep. Joyce Beatty wants a federal judge to unseal two documents the Trump administration used to justify its latest attempt to engrave the president’s name onto the Kennedy Center.

In a motion filed Tuesday, Beatty’s attorneys say the records — a building plan and a five-slide PowerPoint presentation — served as the only pretext for what they called a “rushed effort” by a mostly Trump-appointed board of trustees to shutter the facility and circumvent an earlier court ruling ordering the president’s name be scrubbed from the building’s facade.

“As before, these new documents were ‘light-on-details,’ contained no meaningful ‘cost-benefit analysis of the closure,’ and constituted a ‘stacked deck,’” the motion states.