Whistleblowers accuse Kennedy Center officials of halting planned repairs later used to justify closure
By Aleena Fayaz, Sunlen Serfaty, CNN
(CNN) — Whistleblowers are alleging that Kennedy Center officials halted plans earlier this year to repair leaks in the building, which the Trump administration has highlighted as its reason to close the storied arts institution.
In a letter to Congress Thursday, obtained by CNN, a lawyer representing the anonymous whistleblowers wrote that the Kennedy Center’s director Matt Floca has known about leak issues “for years” and stopped plans for repairs in April, despite receiving $9.3 million dollars in congressional funding for roofing replacement last year.
Repairs “were not treated as priorities nor as acute risks to public safety,” attorney David Seide said in the letter to congressional committees that oversee the arts center. The whistleblowers claimed that Floca requested and received funding for repairs but “stopped the remediation process from moving forward.”
The whistleblowers said Floca received the funds through Trump’s hallmark One Big Beautiful Bill Act but he has delayed addressing the repairs since the bill’s passage last year.
Members of Kennedy Center leadership and President Donald Trump have repeatedly pointed to a September 4 incident where a section of ceiling plaster fell in the Grand Foyer as justification for needing to close their doors. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick shared security video of the piece of ceiling falling, later shared by Trump, as further evidence that the center has “completely unsafe conditions” and declared “people cannot be allowed to go into this building any longer.”
The Kennedy Center in a statement to CNN on Friday pushed back on the whistleblowers’ claims, saying, “The safety of our patrons, artists, and staff comes first.”
“The Kennedy Center has known for years that the roof overhang leaked. What we did not know until this summer was how far the damage had spread inside it,” Floca said in the statement, adding there “was a change in the approach to procuring and delivering the work, not a determination that the work was unnecessary.”
The New York Times was first to report on the whistleblowers’ letter.
The whistleblowers’ claims are the latest development amid a lawsuit brought by Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty, an ex-officio member of the board, to block Trump’s name from being added to the center.
Lawyers for the arts venue have argued that if the current building cannot undergo more extensive renovations, the center “will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down.”
The center said earlier this week in a court filing it will temporarily close until September 30 to assess safety risks.
Trump, who in his second term has installed himself as chairman of the center’s board and overseen sweeping changes to its leadership and programming, announced earlier this year that the center would close for approximately two years for renovations.
It was slated to close on July 4, but a federal judge temporarily blocked the move.
The Trump administration and the Kennedy Center board have continued to push back in the ongoing legal challenge. Lawyers for the center threatened to demolish the building if renovations aren’t allowed.
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