The former Republican congressman was this close to becoming attorney general.

The Trump administration has formally invoked presidential communications privilege to withhold documents and block testimony about the president’s involvement in the Kennedy Center’s management, escalating a legal fight over the performing arts institution’s planned two-year closure.

The court filing Wednesday by Deputy White House Counsel Joshua Hoyt asserted the privilege covered communications between Trump, his advisers and Kennedy Center staff about the institution’s management and operations.

The declaration specifically identifies requests for documents, written answers and deposition testimony that the administration says could reveal presidential decision-making. It also covers some communications involving Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who has been involved in discussions related to the Kennedy Center.

The filing comes after Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center’s board, challenged the administration’s earlier objections to producing evidence in the case.

Beatty is seeking information as she fights the board’s decision to close the center’s main building for two years to conduct renovations. She has argued that the discovery is necessary to understand the board’s decision-making and whether it fulfilled its legal obligations.

The administration, in its response last week to Beatty’s motion to compel, urged U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper to reject her request, arguing that she has already received more than enough evidence to challenge the closure.

“The record as it stands” provides enough evidence for the court to uphold the board’s decision and grant summary judgment to the administration, the Wednesday filing said.

The dispute over privilege has surfaced during depositions, including the questioning of Matt Floca, the executive director for the Kennedy Center, who testified on the institution’s behalf on Oct. 7.

During that deposition, Beatty’s attorney questioned Floca about Trump’s public statements tying the planned renovation to the outcome of a separate legal fight over the center’s renaming.

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sept. 15 that the renovation and reconstruction would not take place if the D.C. Circuit ruled against the board’s approved name change and the decision was not overturned by the Supreme Court.

Asked whether anyone at the center had discussed Trump’s statement with him, Floca’s attorney objected on executive privilege grounds and instructed him not to answer.

Floca had testified that the center takes direction through board resolutions or committee guidance. Asked whether Trump could direct management to delay renovations without board approval, Floca said the center responds to the board and that such an instruction would need to be formalized through a resolution.

“I don’t know what to expect,” Floca said when asked whether the center anticipated Trump might direct or suggest that renovations should not proceed until he received the recognition he sought.

The administration’s declaration seeks to protect communications that could explain how Trump’s public statements intersected with private discussions among his advisers and Kennedy Center staff.

Hoyt argued that the president’s role in appointing the center’s trustees and members of its Advisory Committee on the Arts required him to remain informed about the institution’s management, operations and performance. He said the communications at issue were intended to remain confidential and that disclosure could discourage advisers from providing candid recommendations.

Beatty’s legal team has challenged whether executive privilege can be used so broadly in a dispute concerning the Kennedy Center board’s responsibilities. The administration countered that the president’s official duties extend to statutory responsibilities involving the center and that the privilege can cover communications with advisers outside the White House, including private advisers.

The administration also argued that Beatty has not demonstrated a sufficient need for the protected material. The remaining issue in the case, it said, is whether the board had sufficient basis to vote to temporarily close the center for repairs and renovations — a question that could be answered using the materials presented to the board before its votes.

The filing said Beatty has already received more than 7,500 pages of documents, participated in five depositions and obtained responses to 44 requests for admission.

Cooper previously blocked the board’s initial plan to close the Kennedy Center. Since then, both sides have quickly gathered evidence as the administration asks the judge to lift the preliminary injunction and rule in its favor without a trial.

Seven years ago, a political appointee in the first Trump administration approached U.S. immigration authorities with a request that alarmed career staffers: Scrub the immigration records of Rep. Ilhan Omar, then a newly elected Democratic lawmaker from Minnesota, for evidence of fraud.

That 2019 demand, detailed by three former immigration officials, struck staffers at the time as a highly unusual effort to wield federal power to dig up compromising material on a sitting member of Congress who was a prominent critic of President Donald Trump.

The request sparked a swift review examining Omar’s history, her family’s past as Somali refugees resettled in the United States and rumors that had circulated for years in conservative media over her marriage.

Homeland Security Investigations — the investigative arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — ultimately determined there was insufficient evidence of wrongdoing, one of the former officials said. The idea of pursuing a full investigation was eventually abandoned.

Now, though, with Trump back in the White House and his administration using federal power to take aim at perceived enemies, Omar has once again found herself in federal crosshairs. She is now facing an inquiry over some of the same allegations investigators previously deemed not worth pursuing.

The current effort — which burst into public view Monday as federal agents descended upon Omar’s D.C. home — is focused on whether she or her father lied on paperwork they submitted to obtain legal status and eventual citizenship after arriving in the U.S. in the 1990s.

Investigators are reexamining questions about Omar’s birthdate and her late father’s past military history in Somalia, which had passed scrutiny during the 2019 review. Depending on their findings, the administration could seek to charge Omar with a crime or move to challenge her status in the country.

But such a step would be a sharp reversal of the earlier review, which found no issue with her naturalization, one of the former officials familiar with the earlier effort said.

“I think her citizenship is solid and there wasn’t any fraud there,” the ex-official said.

Omar has dismissed the revived investigation as yet another example of the Justice Department, under Trump, attempting “to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.”

“Trump has spread lie after lie about the Congresswoman in a desperate attempt to justify his extraordinary abuse of power,” her spokesperson said in a statement Thursday. “This is politically motivated and an escalation of Trump’s personal vendetta against her lasting over a decade.”

This account of the Trump administration’s current and past efforts to investigate and possibly build a case against Omar is based on interviews with a dozen people, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic details of those probes.

Several current and former officials raised questions about the scope, tactics and motivations driving the current Omar investigation, which they say appears to be disregarding key norms on how immigration reviews are typically handled and bypassing guardrails intended to ensure federal inquiries, including those looking into sitting lawmakers, are not perceived to be driven by politics.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department said the agency does not comment on ongoing investigations. The Department of Homeland Security referred questions to the Justice Department.

Questions about the probe came into play ahead of this week’s highly public search of Omar’s home.

Before carrying out the search, prosecutors spent days working to allay concerns from a federal judge that their plans could run afoul of constitutional protections shielding members of Congress from unwarranted executive branch intrusion, according to three people familiar with the matter.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew J. Sharbaugh, who ultimately signed off on the warrant, first imposed strict conditions on how the search should be carried out, the people said.

His limits on the search appeared intended to ensure that the warrant fell in line with the D.C. court’s interpretation of the Constitution’s speech and debate clause, which generally shields lawmakers’ legislative duties and actions from criminal probes. As part of the search, agents removed boxes of documents and seized Omar’s cellphone and passport, one person familiar with the matter said.

Trump has assailed Omar for years, and this week condemned her again on social media and public remarks.

“I think she’s a terrible person,” he told reporters. “But that’s really up to the DOJ. I have nothing to do with it.”

Trump’s administration has also made clear its scrutiny on Omar is not limited to immigration issues.

Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in D.C., announced Tuesday her office had launched its own investigation into Omar’s personal finances, tied to disclosure statements she filed in Congress last year and separate from the immigration probe.

Pirro, a former Fox News host, once drew a highly unusual public rebuke from the network in 2019 for on-air comments suggesting that Omar, as a Muslim, could not be loyal to the U.S. Constitution.

Omar’s office has previously dismissed questions raised by House Republicans over her financial disclosure statements as a right-wing attempt to “manufacture controversy.”

However, federal prosecutors’ interest in the finances of Omar extend back to the Biden administration, according to two people familiar with the effort. Those individuals said it was not clear why the investigation during the prior administration appeared to have stalled.

But the revived immigration investigation into Omar appears to be the furthest along and the administration’s higher priority.

Alessandra P. Serano, an associate deputy attorney general who is playing a key role in the probe, went before the judge seeking the search warrant for Omar’s home, two people familiar with the matter said. Attorney General Todd Blanche also recently dispatched Serano, a trusted aide, to Florida to check in on the high-profile and struggling Florida-based investigation into former Obama and Biden-era officials, according to multiple people.

Authorities have issued more than a dozen subpoenas related to Omar and the investigation into her, including some to her siblings, seeking testimony before a grand jury in Minneapolis in the coming weeks, two people said.

The Washington Post has reported that investigators are focused on whether Omar or her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, intentionally misstated her birth date on immigration paperwork so she could be eligible to derive citizenship through him as a minor when he was naturalized in 2000.

Investigators are also scrutinizing whether Omar’s father may have purposefully lied or omitted information on his past military service in Somalia that could have made him ineligible to obtain legal status in the country.

But three former officials involved in the 2019 review of Omar’s immigration file said both of those issues were considered during that inquiry.

An official with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, who was normally tasked with scrutinizing the backgrounds of people including serious criminals, terrorists and potential national security threats, was asked in 2019 to review Omar’s background. The then-freshman lawmaker had emerged as a frequent focus of conservative attacks.

At the time, the agency was primarily focused on possible fraud related to Omar’s marriage to her former husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. Right-wing commentators had repeatedly pressed unsubstantiated claims that Omar and Elmi were siblings who carried out a sham marriage so that Elmi could obtain U.S. immigration benefits.

Elmi had previously filed an immigration petition related to his marriage-based green card that would move it from conditional status to permanent. USCIS requested additional evidence due to concerns over the validity of his marriage, but Elmi withdrew the application following that request, one of the former officials said. Elmi could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.

The 2019 review of Omar also looked at other issues, some of which are being examined anew.

For instance, back then, USCIS quickly determined it could not accurately answer questions over Omar’s age because refugees frequently come from countries with little or no birth records, making it hard to determine with any certainty.

“That’s not strange and that’s not a red flag to me,” one of the former officials said. “It’s just very, very common that there aren’t great birth records.”

The agency also examined Omar’s father’s immigration file but did not find any issues, according to the former official.

The USCIS officer tasked with vetting Omar produced a one-page memo of those findings and shared it with a senior USCIS official and a fraud detention official before the effort was ultimately abandoned, the person said. Due to the sensitivity, the memo was printed out, and distributed in person, and not shared over email.

Whether the current investigation will uncover more substantial evidence to back the administration’s fraud claims remains to be seen. Even if the Trump administration finds wrongdoing, any attempt to strip her citizenship would likely be lengthy and result in a legal battle.

The administration, however, is also exploring the possibility that it could seek to revoke her citizenship certificate if the current investigation does not result in criminal charges or a conviction, a senior Trump administration official said.

Revocation is a rarely employed USCIS administrative process that can be used to cancel the document due to fraud or an error. The process is not restricted to a certain period of time like criminal denaturalizations, which are subject to a 10-year statute of limitations.

The revocation would not remove her citizenship but would make it challenging to obtain some government documents. This action could open the door to immigration-related charges and possibly removal proceedings, though such a novel application of the administrative authority would almost certainly face challenges from Omar in court.

In a statement, Omar’s spokesperson assailed the Trump administration’s efforts to target the congresswoman.

“He has lied about her family, about her immigration history, and about her love of this country,” the statement read. “But the truth is that Trump’s push to strip her of her citizenship and deport her has no basis in the law and has no precedent. This isn’t a legitimate law enforcement action.”

Top Justice Department officials have sidelined career prosecutors’ long-running grand jury investigation of Meta Platforms over facilitating illegal pharmaceutical sales, just after company executives were subpoenaed to testify, two people familiar with the matter said.

Senior leaders at DOJ headquarters ordered career prosecutors in the Western District of Virginia to cease the criminal investigation following advocacy from Meta‘s legal team, the individuals said. The Trump-appointed officials are contemplating a path to quickly resolve the sprawling opioids case stemming from the Biden administration, they said, adding that Meta executives are no longer being summoned to the grand jury.

The officials — including acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter and his No. 2 Aakash Singh — are considering a civil resolution with a fine or a non-prosecution agreement, added one of the people. Such a deal would allow the social media giant to avoid charges for its role in creating a market for youth to purchase deadly fentanyl pills and other addictive drugs.

Department leaders intervened to protect the company as its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has played a core role shaping President Donald Trump’s strategy to counter growing backlash over the safety of AI technology. While the Trump administration has retreated on a wide range of other corporate investigations inherited from the Biden era, this probe was initially allowed to continue when Meta lawyers elevated it to political leadership of DOJ last year, said two people, who like others spoke anonymously about an ongoing case.

Officials are now mulling a range of more lenient options that fall short of the drug trafficking theory pursued by the Appalachia-based Western Virginia district known for aggressive corporate pharmaceutical prosecutions holding chief executives accountable, the individuals said.

The investigation arose during the Covid-19 pandemic when Meta and other social media behemoths faced public and congressional scrutiny for allowing the promotion of prescription drugs to children on their platforms, and for potentially profiting off of users’ illicit transactions. Political and career supervisors overseeing the case have at various points debated its strength, given the challenge of proving criminal intent of far removed Meta executives, said two people briefed on the situation.

Meta assembled a team of prominent defense lawyers from Davis Polk & Wardwell, former Republican Deputy AG Mark Filip of Kirkland & Ellis, and Sullivan & Cromwell — which represents Trump personally in criminal and civil litigation — throughout the history of this case, several people said.

The more recent subpoenas to executives prompted Meta to escalate its concerns to the top of DOJ, leading officials to convene the latest meeting between Filip, Davis Polk lawyers, Meta’s in-house counsel, and the Western District of Virginia prosecutors. Career prosecutors were then told to retreat from their grand jury investigation, the individuals added.

It’s not clear whether prosecutors were targeting particular executives for individual charges or if they were seen as witnesses in a corporate prosecution.

Defense lawyers pointed to instances in which Meta has cooperated with law enforcement by flagging possible illicit drug promotions on its site and has taken steps to mitigate future risks, said one of the individuals. The company also announced partnerships with law enforcement in September for an “anti-scam education campaign” to support Asia-Pacific markets and issued a threat report in March highlighting its increased efforts to combat cartels and other drug-related gang activity.

The existence of this DOJ investigation of Meta was first reported in the Wall Street Journal in 2024.

Meta declined to comment.

A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office in Western Virginia deferred comment to DOJ headquarters.

“The Department of Justice cannot comment on ongoing investigations or negotiations. However, this Department has ended the Biden-era days of aggressively and indiscriminately targeting corporations and businesses,” department spokesperson Kiersten Pels said in a statement. “Instead, we are focused on following the facts and the law to surgically address corporate wrongdoing.”

The Trump DOJ has recently overruled career prosecutors seeking criminal charges against other global corporations facing investigations for consumer health and safety.

That includes a criminal case against Abbott Laboratories stemming from contaminated baby formula that resulted in a $385 million civil settlement, and a non-prosecution agreement with Chinese tech company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, which agreed to pay $600 million over accusations it failed to prevent illegal pharmaceutical sales. CBS News reported earlier on DOJ’s internal dispute over the Alibaba case.

Meta’s probe was led by Randy Ramseyer, the veteran Abingdon, Va.-based assistant US attorney who has long chased Big Pharma heavyweights from Purdue to Abbott on theories of misbranding opioids. Ramseyer is held in high regard by colleagues and feared in the defense bar for his hardball tactics. Pharma companies in prior administrations have also lobbied Main Justice for relief from Ramseyer.

He pulled off the rare feat of putting a pharmaceutical CEO in prison late in Trump’s first term. Lately, however, Ramseyer and his district appear to be losing clout to defendants and Main justice. Under the leadership of Western Virginia’s top prosecutor Robert Tracci, whom the administration installed after it pushed out Trump’s first selection for the post last year, the office also experienced a Washington intervention to scuttle another of its multi-year opioids investigations over the summer.

Swedish pharmaceutical company Orexo announced in August that it had reached a non-binding settlement with the department to end the probe, which two people familiar with the matter said resulted from defense lawyers elevating the case to DOJ leadership.