Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said he opened a probe after whistleblowers alleged the Kennedy Center rushed renovations and ignored federal contracting rules to prepare for a December Fifa "peace prize" ceremony hosted there by Donald Trump.
Whitehouse, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, wrote in a July 9 letter to Executive Director Matt Floca that the allegations stem from a whistleblower disclosure submitted to him by the Government Accountability Project and requested documents and answers by July 23.
The disclosure alleges that a cosmetic and rushed revamp of the Center’s reflecting pool is already rusting and peeling and will need to be fully rebuilt; that Trump’s "preferred contractor" cut corners when repainting the Center’s columns; that an $8 million no-bid flooring contract went to a firm with no apparent concert-hall experience; that the Center tore out a brand-new bathroom floor because President Trump did not like the color; and that the Kennedy Center rewrote its own contracting rules in a post hoc effort to justify the no-bid contracts.
Whitehouse said the allegations raise "serious questions about the Center’s leadership and the Board’s financial management of the Kennedy Center and whether the Center’s representations to Congress were made in good faith" and wrote, "Instead of pursuing renovations tailored to the building’s actual needs, the Center rushed a series of renovations driven by the President’s aesthetic whims and his desire to star in a series of televised events in December."
Whitehouse said the whistleblower disclosure includes "firsthand accounts of multiple former Center project managers, supported by contemporaneous documents and photographs," and he appended an 83-page appendix of internal center documents, emails and photos that he said show apparently shoddy construction.
Whitehouse told staff that some work began in August with no written contract in place and that a $4.4 million deal was only awarded afterwards; he estimated repairs to the columns would cost about $1.5 million.
The whistleblower material and Whitehouse's letter say the work was rushed to be finished in time for Trump to accept a FIFA Peace Prize and to host televised events at the center, and they say Trump’s allies took control of the institution after Trump’s second-term inauguration by ousting prior leadership, installing a new board that named him chairman and affixing his name to the building; Democrats sued and a federal judge ruled in May that Trump’s name must come off the venue. Whitehouse said Trump tried to close the center for two years but was ordered by the court to keep it open because only Congress could change its name.
The Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday, but earlier defended its practices in a statement, and Roma Daravi, a spokesperson for the center and a White House communications staffer during Trump’s first term, said the whistleblowers' claims that contracting standards had been bypassed were not correct. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but a White House spokesperson said, "President Trump did what Democrats wouldn’t. After decades of neglect, he committed the bold leadership and proper resources to fix the Kennedy Center and start the renovations of the finest performing arts facility in the world." The letter comes after last year when Trump secured $257 million from Congress for repairs and restoration at the center, and Representative Rick Larsen, the senior Democrat on the House infrastructure committee, said the allegations are "serious and concerning" and urged the Board of Trustees to ensure the funds are used for necessary repairs.
Whitehouse called for a full accounting of the renovations and their costs and warned, "Public funds ought to be spent lawfully, prudently, and in service of the institution, not on the stylistic whims of the current President."