'Chairman' Trump uses Dick Cheney precedent to keep his 'input' about Kennedy Center's fate out of discovery

Though he labeled him "irrelevant" and said he was "never a fan," President Donald Trump is invoking a precedent set by the late former Vice President Dick Cheney to shield his "deliberations" about the Kennedy Center's future from discovery.

The DOJ, in response to Kennedy Center board of trustees member Rep. Joyce Beatty's motion to compel discovery, told U.S. District Judge Christopher "Casey" Cooper on Wednesday that the Democratic lawmaker's requests should fail across the board.

The DOJ first mentioned Cheney v. United States in the opening paragraph of the filing.

"Requests for discovery that pertain to the President of the United States are no ordinary matter. Instead, they raise distinct separation-of-powers concerns. Both the Supreme Court and the D.C. Circuit have recognized as much time and again," the filing said. "Thus, a plaintiff may not serve overbroad discovery requests on the President and expect a line-by-line response. See Cheney v. U.S. Dist. Ct. for D.C., 542 U.S. 367, 388 (2004)."

In 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court held that discovery orders against Cheney and "other senior officials in the Executive Branch" of the Bush administration were "overly broad."

More recently, the Trump administration has cited the case to resist disclosure of the "sensitive workings" of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), as a "body within the Executive Office of the President tasked with advising the President." Cooper also issued the DOGE order the DOJ seeks to vacate at the Supreme Court.

The DOJ has also opposed the American Bar Association's attempt to identify presidential advisers behind Trump's law firm executive orders.

In that case, the DOJ said "there is no basis for discovery at all" to name senior staffers involved in drafting and approving the executive orders because that, again, would be "contrary to the critical separation of powers principles" expressed in Cheney.

Beatty filed a motion to compel after the Obama-appointed judge allowed her to "seek discovery regarding" a "placard" that appeared to read "Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED" — which the president was photographed looking at on Air Force One.

She argued that the administration constructed a "stone wall of executive privilege" to shut her out from discovering just how "intimately" involved "Chairman Trump" was in board decisions to shutter the center, and what "input and instructions management received from" a president who wanted "appropriate recognition" by putting his name on a building in claimed financial and physical "collapse."

"It would be deeply disturbing if the Department of Justice could sweep those potential illegalities under the rug simply by making a conclusory assertion of executive privilege, without pointing to any specific and legitimate interests of the executive branch in blocking production of the information at issue," Beatty said.

The DOJ has countered that President Trump's simultaneous status as chairman of the board "is of no moment" and that Beatty's "extraordinarily weak justification for an extraordinarily intrusive discovery campaign" loses regardless.

"In other words, even though the President's statutory duties and the Chairman's trust duties overlap, what matters for the purpose of executive privilege is that Plaintiff seeks information, documents, and communications concerning the President's actions in his official capacity," the filing said, acknowledging that Trump "has at various times participated in renovation planning at the Center."

"For three reasons, Plaintiff asserts that '[t]his Is Not A Cheney Case.' All three are wrong," the government went on, claiming it is "not true" that it has stonewalled Beatty because it has produced "more than 7,500 pages" of "documents and responses."