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...
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