Add another quarter-million dollars to the mounting cost of the Trump regime’s tenure at the Kennedy Center.
A Washington, D.C. judge on Tuesday ordered The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts to pay $252,479.70 in legal costs to jazz drummer Chuck Redd following a losing effort at a lawsuit against the musician.
Judge Tanya Jones Bosier said in the order that the Kennedy Center owed Redd for the legal fees he piled up while defending himself against the action and that the more than a quarter-million-dollar judgment was a “good faith evaluation.” The fees must be paid within 45 days.
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“The Trump-controlled Kennedy Center tried to silence opposition to its illegal name change by filing a meritless lawsuit against jazz musician Chuck Redd,” Lisa J. Banks, an attorney for Redd, said in a statement. “Now the court has ordered the Kennedy Center to pay Mr. Redd’s legal fees, which is appropriate as no citizen should have to spend time and money fending off baseless and politically motivated lawsuits filed by the Trump Administration.”
In December, Trump allies installed in leadership at the center changed its name to The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Shortly after, Redd informed the venue he and his fellow musicians wouldn’t be performing the annual Christmas concert, which he had led since 2006, legal filings showed. The Kennedy Center, under its Trump-appointed leadership, sued the drummer in March. Later that month, Redd requested the court dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that without a signed contract the Trump team had no basis for suing.
In June, Bosier threw out the lawsuit brought by Trump’s Kennedy Center team against Redd. The Kennedy Center had claimed the musician broke a contract when he canceled a Christmas concert in protest of President Donald Trump adding his name to the center. The judge tossed the Kennedy Center’s complaint after Redd presented evidence that no such contract existed.
The order to pay attorney fees and legal costs to Redd is yet another blow to Trump’s Kennedy Center regime. A federal court in May found that Trump adding his name to the venue was illegal and ordered it removed from the building and scrubbed from the center’s materials, an order that an appeals court upheld. A closure for renovations was also halted by the court.
Ben Folds recently testified before Congress that Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center undermined the federal arts institution and turned it into a “hyper-politicized environment.”
