Legal observer said she saw forklift repeatedly hit Kennedy Center pillars

In mid-September 2026, the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., announced it would be closing its doors to the public due to financial concerns and renovations. Soon after, U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, a Kennedy Center trustee, filed a motion requesting an emergency hearing for officials to explain the closure. 

A claim then spread online that a court document said a legal observer witnessed a forklift ramming into columns at the Kennedy Center columns. Snopes readers sent us the following post (archived), asking whether the forklift was intentionally damaging the building:

We had thought the “safety issues” at the Kennedy Center were caused by the Trump administration. It appears that might be the case. In a sworn declaration filed today, a legal observer said she witnessed a forklift carrying fencing drive to the north side of the building and repeatedly run into and hit the Kennedy Center’s pillars. They had to damage the building to make it unsafe so they could close it for renovations.

A legal observer did indeed write in a court document about witnessing a forklift repeatedly strike the columns of the Kennedy Center on Sept. 16, 2026. Therefore, the claim is true.

We cannot, however, determine why the forklift was ramming into the pillars.

We reached out to the Kennedy Center to learn more about the forklifts at the venue and ask why one was striking the pillars. We will update this post accordingly. 

On Sept. 16, the legal team representing Beatty in her case against President Donald Trump, submitted a declaration (archived) to the court describing what a member of their team witnessed. Bridget Kennedy-Bailey of the Washington Litigation Group described her visit to the Kennedy Center on Sept. 16:

I saw a forklift carrying what appeared to be a more permanent form of fencing drive over to the north side of the building. I saw the forklift run into and hit the pillars on the building several times.

Kennedy-Bailey described arriving that morning and being told by an employee that the Kennedy Center was closed for the day and that the order came from “higher-ups.” A public relations representative told her the building was closed for repairs, she said. Kennedy-Bailey also described other forklifts moving white-and-orange gates to the front of the building. 

At the bottom of the declaration, Kennedy-Bailey wrote, “I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct.”

We cannot determine the intention behind the forklift ramming into the pillars until we hear from the Kennedy Center or an employee willing to speak on the record. 

The forklift rumor came after a judge said changing the building’s name to include Trump’s name would require congressional approval, while the Trump-appointed board argued that the Kennedy Center’s survival depended on the name change. 

Beatty described Trump having a “tantrum” during a closed-door meeting with the trustees on Sept. 15, after the judge blocked his bid to have his name on the Center. “He went into name-calling, from everything from trying to say that I was an obstructionist, I was dumb,” Beatty said on MS NOW.

For further reading, Snopes has covered numerous claims about the Trump administration’s work on the Kennedy Center.

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