The much-debated potential two-year closure of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is being proposed to cover up the institution’s failings since US president Donald Trump installed loyalists to the board and became its chair, says Ohio Democrat Joyce Beatty in a fiery 51-page Friday filing in US District Court for Washington, D.C. Beatty is an ex-officio member of the board of trustees. Trump has insisted the closure is necessary and dictated a date for it, the filing points out, without any proper board oversight.

The strongly worded filing says the administration has responded “grudgingly—to put it generously” to requests for information; criticizes a defense by Trump as being based on “a fake one-year review that never happened”; cites a “sham process to lend a false patina of legitimacy”; and, in a piquant choice of words given Trump’s admiration of the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, calls Trump’s decision to close the center a “ukase,” a term referring to a proclamation by a tsar. All that is on page one.