At Kennedy Center hearing, judge presses DOJ lawyers on renaming and renovation

Justice Department lawyers said in a court filing this week that keeping Trump’s name off the performance center could lead to its being demolished.

The judge in a court battle over efforts to add Donald Trump’s name to the front of the Kennedy Center peppered the administration’s lawyers with questions Thursday on their rush to put his name back on it.

The Trump-appointed board at the performance venue voted this month to add the words “renovated and restored by President Donald J. Trump” to the building and to rename the property “President Donald J. Trump Plaza” by Sept. 8.

“What’s magic about that date?” U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper asked Justice Department attorney Brantley Mayers, noting that it seems “expedited.”

Mayers said that was the date the board had voted on and a timetable it plans to stick to.

Cooper then asked why adding Trump’s name to the building — the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts — would not violate federal appropriations rules that prevent aggrandizement, promoting a specific individual within a federal agency.