Former employees of the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts have told Congress that centre officials cancelled a plan to repair leaking infrastructure months before those same officials began citing the leaks as an urgent safety risk requiring the building’s closure, according to a letter and internal documents reported by The New York Times.

A lawyer representing the former employees sent the material to lawmakers on Thursday, adding fresh fuel to an already contentious standoff over President Trump’s tenure atop the institution.

The centre’s main building remains shut, officials say, because of structural deterioration that previous leaderships failed to address. The whistleblower argues that the opposite is closer to the truth, suggesting that the severity of the problem has been overstated, given that the current leadership had the chance to fix it but chose to wait.

The centre pushed back firmly on Friday, saying that recent inspections had uncovered damage far more extensive than anyone previously realised. “The safety of our patrons, artists, and staff comes first,” said Matt Floca, the centre’s executive director, in a statement carried by the Times. “The Kennedy Centre 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.”

The dispute lands squarely inside Trump’s ongoing push for a two-year, $257 million renovation of the building, which he has repeatedly described as...

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