Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Hiding Kennedy Center From the Public and Judge Cooper Has Had Enough

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Starting point is 00:01:14 Terms and conditions apply. Visit Tim Hordens.ca. slash triangle for details. Donald Trump and the Kennedy Center board that he controls don't want the American people to know what the actual construction evaluation report. says that they base their decision to close the Kennedy Center on because they probably didn't base it on the JLL 160 page report, nor a PowerPoint created by a construction company called Delta. They likely made the decision because Donald Trump told them to make the decision because he wanted

Starting point is 00:01:51 to put the Kennedy Center into a death grip in order to promote his narrative that, only he can save it. He's the fireman arsonist all over again, and Judge Cooper is not having any of it. We got a new ruling in the Kennedy Center case in which Judge Cooper has said that the strong presumption of the public's access to court records and documents means that that JLL report with some minor redaction is coming out to the American people through the lawsuit brought by Representative Joyce Beattie against the Kennedy Center. There's a lot of developments in the Kennedy Center, including Donald Trump once again,

Starting point is 00:02:35 secondly, trying to hide behind, I'm the president and I have executive privilege over all my communications with the board. No way. He is the puppet master of everybody on that board, all the Republican ones that he put on there. And now he's trying to say, and you don't get to know what I've told these people in private.

Starting point is 00:02:55 As I said from the very beginning, The lawyers for Joyce Beattie, including Norm Isson, should be going after those emails and texts and WhatsApp and signal communications between Donald Trump, Howard Lutnik, and others about the decision making, for lack of a better term, in the Kennedy Center matter. I have been calling for the judge and for the lawyers to call for a replacement of the board, at least temporarily, with a receiver, some sort of court-ordered monitor. a former federal judge to help make decisions about the Kennedy Center before Donald Trump takes a wrecking ball to it in the middle of the night and knocks it over. You're on Legal AF. This is Wednesday. I'm Michael Popak traveling, but nonetheless with you.

Starting point is 00:03:42 Take a minute and hit that free subscribe button. We're just a couple of thousand people short of passing our next subscriber milestone. With your help, you'll help us get us there as early as today. Let's talk about the Kennedy Center. out of a 30-member board, there's one lone person, Representative Joyce Beattie, Congresswoman, who brought the original suit to stop Donald Trump's takeover, destruction, demolition of the Kennedy Center and scarring it with his name, the Donald J. Trump Memorial JFK Memorial Kennedy Center.

Starting point is 00:04:15 What are you kidding me? And so the judge already has in place a permanent injunction stopping the name change. There's some other litigation about, Well, can we make the garden named after to Donald Trump? Can we make the plaza named after Donald Trump? No. You can't do anything that detracts from the living memory of JFK, of John F. Kennedy. It doesn't even say President John F. Kennedy, just as John F. Kennedy, that Congress

Starting point is 00:04:42 bestowed upon him after he became the fallen president was assassinated. It's the only memorial to JFK, hard to believe, in Washington, D.C. And so that permanent injunction is in place. He also entered some preliminary injunctions about tearing down the building or stopping programming or closing the building. And they're still doing hand-to-hand combat over that. But Donald Trump wants to tie Joyce Beattie's side of the case, tie their hands behind their back and tie their hands to their legs and not give them any information they need to try the case and win the case from their position. So on the communications, the e-be, I mean, listen, I've been trying to. cases for 35 years. I can't tell you how many cases I've won because I found the smoking gun in an

Starting point is 00:05:30 email exchange in a signal direct message, text message exchange. And they're blocking all of that production, arguing executive privilege. We're the president. It's a federal building. I'm the chairperson of the committee. And when I talk to the other members of the committee, that's covered by presidential privilege. No, there's an entire body of law that says, as what very, very narrow set of communications are given that level of privilege. You know, like him conducting his presidential powers, his domestic powers, his foreign powers, his war powers. I kind of get that.

Starting point is 00:06:11 But running the Kennedy Center into the ground doesn't really fit that bill. Now it doesn't. And you know that Howard Lutnik, whose wife, Alison Lutnik, is on that board. You know he's writing emails and text messages to people on there. like Paolo Zampoly, who's in the Donald Trump administration as a special envoy, who just got a civil rape lawsuit filed against him, and who's come out and said, we might have to tear it down. You know there's communications.

Starting point is 00:06:39 Here's Howard Lutnik bragging about being the guy in charge and the guy behind the guy and the guy being Donald Trump. Play the clip. The building is dangerous. People say, oh, don't overstate that it's dangerous. Look, there are chunks of concrete falling all. the ceiling in the garage. The Jonathan Kennedy Memorial,

Starting point is 00:06:59 Center for the Performing Arts, should be the greatest cultural institution in the United States of America and possibly the world. And the president wants to do that, right? But it's not there now. It's had decades of financial neglect. And the reason that happened is because Congress is good at a lot of things, but what they're not good at

Starting point is 00:07:24 is putting out a little bit of money every year to renovate and restore a building. 257 million would be enough money to completely renovate and restore the building if President Trump was the construction manager. If he agreed to do it, we could get this done. Yeah, we don't want the building torn down. Thank you. And we want your emails and your text messages, your signal, your WhatsApp, you disappearing whatever's between you and Trump and playing in that role.

Starting point is 00:07:52 See, on one hand, they want to say, oh, you know, they have enough. We're ready to go to trial. Let's have summary judgment. But you don't get to dictate what the other side is entitled to in our adversarial process and through discovery. So that went on in the last 48 hours. Then today, brand new filing, the judge entered his order. We'll put this all up on substack in which he applied a six-factor test and declared that the Trump side, the Kennedy Center side must produce 163 page report created by JLL, a huge real estate brokerage and a financial services firm, and a PowerPoint by Delta construction.

Starting point is 00:08:36 So the PowerPoint and the JLL report is purportedly what was in the board's agenda package before they voted to shut down the Kennedy Center. maybe demolish it. And they've submitted those documents to the judge to justify their actions and that they didn't breach their fiduciary duties. Okay, the judge says this is relatively simple under the six-factor test of a case in the District of Columbia, which we called Hubbard, the Hubbard factors. Most of the most important Hubbard factors favor public, the presumption of public access. See, in our court system, we do things in the public. Very few things are allowed to be sealed or redacted in the public arena because there's a presumption that the public needs to see everything as if they're in court.

Starting point is 00:09:30 That's why I can go on to a public electronic docket and tell you about every entry that's ever been made. If there's a sealing, even in a criminal case, like if a grand jury transcript, later on, that'll get unsealed. But in a civil context, the presumption is overwhelmingly in favor of public access. also helps podcasts and commentators like me. We can get our hands on those documents. So the judge just issued his order, which we will put up on a legal AF substack for you. And here's what the order says,

Starting point is 00:10:02 just so we have it all right here. Ordered, this is today, that the defendant's motion to file under seal, the defense motion to file under seal is granted. It is further ordered. that defendant's motion to unseal is granted. The clerk of the court shall unseal in full the Delta PowerPoint. Defendant shall submit to the plaintiff and the court

Starting point is 00:10:27 any proposals for narrowly tailored redactions to the JLL plan, that's 163-page construction analysis, accompanied by particularized and substantial written justification for why they're redacting anything for security or safety reasons, by no later than October 14th, plaintiff can respond to the redactions by the 19th, and then the judge will make his own ruling. See, they argued,

Starting point is 00:10:53 judge, there's a federal building. We can't let the schematics get out there. They'll blow up the building, you know, some version of that. And the judge says, there's some limited security and safety issues I could see. Maybe they shouldn't know where every open shaft is or how insecure the building is, you know, like that. But the rest has to come out because the judge ruled this is a,

Starting point is 00:11:13 judicial court document because you want me to rely on it. But you see, once again, you know, Mr. Transparency, every time I hear the press for Donald Trump, he's the most transparent president of all time. Not in courtrooms. He's not. Not when he's trying to duck and dodge when it comes to the very reports that he alleges his independent trustees have relied upon. But what is he hiding. I can speculate. I have a pretty good informed opinion that that report is going to show that building is not as bad as it looks, and that that building can be saved and salvaged and so came at the programming. And on the other hand, he's doing the exact same thing. Oh, you don't get to see my emails and my text messages and Howard Lutnik and all of his emails and his text messages.

Starting point is 00:12:01 No, that's all private. That's executive privilege. That's not how executive privilege works. And here's what they said about that, the lawyers for Joyce Beattie in their filing. Let me read you that. After plaintiffs served written discovery, the Department of Justice pivoted to a sweeping claim of presidential communications privilege to bar any inquiry into those communications or indeed into any inputs and instructions the Kennedy Center staff received from its board chair. That would be Trump. The department now refuses to provide any documents held by the Kennedy Center, even touching on communications between the chairman and management, and intends to block all inquiry into those communications and depositions. The department's sweeping assertion

Starting point is 00:12:46 of privilege appears to be unprecedented. Donald Trump is the chair of a non-profit corporate board, and his decisions and directions lie at the heart of the board's actions, allowing defendants to hide behind this unwarranted assertion of privilege would obstruct the search for the truth, frustrate the court's discovery order, and undermine public confidence in these important proceedings. I think that about sums it up, don't you? They've also objected to closing of discovery. See, Trump wants closed discovery, no more document exchange, and let's go to motions. Like, we're not ready to go to motions. I've been in cases where discovery has to be extended in order to do justice. And the judge is going to make a ruling on that in the next week or so.

Starting point is 00:13:31 Here's the summary. Kennedy Center's still standing. It's been closed. They have not sought to undermine or vacate the preliminary injunction, nor have they filed an appeal to Trump side. There's no programming going on right now, which as I know is annoying the judge. And hopefully after this round of discovery and these documents come to light, there may be pressure on saving the Kennedy Center, getting it reopened. Sure, do the structural things that are necessary so it doesn't fall down. Right. We don't want to be singing a song one day. Kennedy Senator is falling down. We don't want that. We all agree we don't want that. But we also don't want Donald Trump with his hand on the fuel line and the lifeline and denying it money so that it falls

Starting point is 00:14:20 so he can rescue it. And that's what Judge Cooper is watching ever so closely. Great programming note coming up tomorrow morning. My number two video is going to be my interview. with the head of the Brennan Center at NYU, one of the leaders of the rule of law and protection of the rule of law, talking about reform of the United States Supreme Court. Let's start talking about seven to six decisions in which a woman's right to choose has been restored.

Starting point is 00:14:49 How does that sound? Let's start talking about Chief Justice, Katanji Brown Jackson. How does that sound? Let's talk about term limits. Let's talk about restoring independence and making sure Donald Trump alone doesn't change the face of the Supreme Court for the next 50 years. Let's try that. So until my next report in about an hour, I'm Michael Popak.

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Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Hiding Kennedy Center From the Public and Judge Cooper Has Had Enough

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