‘Could only happen to Trump’: President hijacks Cabinet meeting to cry about lawsuits over his radical DC plans

President Donald Trump spent roughly 15 minutes of a cabinet meeting on Thursday complaining about a historic preservation group’s efforts to block him from shutting down the Kennedy Center for a purported preservation and grousing about the Justice Department being unable to prosecute the chairman of the Federal Reserve over their renovation.

The president was in the middle of a long soliloquy about fixing up the Washington, DC-based arts center — which was built in honor of assassinated President John F. Kennedy — when he began to claim the controversial renovation would be “under budget, ahead of schedule” and unfavorably compared the project to the long-running rehab of the nearly century-old Federal Reserve headquarters.

He quickly pivoted to airing a related grievance about the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a congressionally chartered nonprofit that has filed multiple lawsuits against his administration to block the construction of his planned White House ballroom after he ordered the historic East Wing reduced to rubble last fall.

“Everything I do, I get sued. Under budget, ahead of schedule, I get sued over a ballroom that’s going to be the most beautiful ballroom in the country … we get sued by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. They don’t know what they’re doing,” he said.

He also complained that he’d separately been facing litigation over the Kennedy Center project and suggested the lawsuit was only attributable to the center’s board — made up of loyalists he appointed after taking office and sacking the previous leadership — adding his name to the name of the organization.

“Then I just found out we got sued by that group and another group … I guess on the fixing up of again, I’ll use the old name Kennedy Center — it’s going to be beautiful when you add the name Trump,” he said.

“But we got sued, and all I’m doing is fixing it up. We’re fixing broken marble. We’re putting on a roof because it leaks like a sieve. We’re fixing steel that’s broken. Same building, same exact building we’re fixing. It’s going to be beautiful. It’s going to be so beautiful and safe … but think of it. I get sued because I’m fixing up the Trump Kennedy Center. We’re going to make it gorgeous and safe. We’re fixing new windows, do this, but just all fix up. I got sued by preservationists.”

“This could only happen to Trump,” he added.

The president eventually pivoted back to attacking the Federal Reserve renovation and the central bank’s chairman, Jerome Powell, with whom he has spent years feuding over Powell’s failure to keep interest rates low to help Republicans’ electoral prospects.

He groused that the historic preservation group that has fought his ballroom project hasn’t sued Powell over the long-running Federal Reserve headquarters rehab and accused the chairman of suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

“I don’t blame him, but, but they don’t sue a man who has taken this gorgeous building, ripped it down from the inside, taken ceilings that are as beautiful as you’ve ever seen, taking the ceilings down instead of leaving them, taking walls down that were two feet thick of solid concrete and plaster, replacing them with six inch walls with no insulation,” Trump said.

“But when, when Jeanine Pirro and Pam [Bondi] in the group, when they bring a suit … and then we have a judge that attacks us, attacks us, so we’ve got to get our priorities straight. You know, it’s, it’s a very sad thing that’s happened with the Fed.”

The president’s comments come just days after newly-released court records showed the Justice Department’s probe into the $2.5 billion renovation project at the Federal Reserve found no evidence of a crime.

A court transcript released to the media revealed that Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Massucco had told Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg that the government had no evidence that Powell had lied to Congress in testimony about the renovation.

Asked what false statements the Fed chair might have made during a closed court hearing on March 3, Massucco told the judge: “Well, we don’t know is my first answer,”

Massucco, the chief of the criminal division for U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s Washington office, then told the judge that there were “certain areas that he addressed that caused concern.”

When Boasberg pressed him on “what evidence” there was “of fraud or criminal misconduct in relation to the renovations,” the prosecutor again replied: “We do not know at this time.”

He then added that there were “1.2 billion reasons for us to look into it,” referring to the amount of cost overruns on the long-running project.

Weeks later, Boasberg issued a ruling to quash subpoenas that had been issued for documents at the Fed, writing that there was “a mountain of evidence” showing that the government had “served these subpoenas on the Board to pressure its Chair into voting for lower interest rates or resigning.”

In his ruling, Boasberg said the Justice Department rejected his offer to let the government submit further evidence against Powell directly to him, so that they wouldn’t have to tip their hand to the Fed or Powell.

“The Court is thus left with no credible reason to think that the Government is investigating suspicious facts as opposed to targeting a disfavored official,” the judge wrote.

With additional reporting by agencies