Congress has carved out an exemption to the National Historic Preservation Act, in order to allow presidents to make needed changes. The current Oval Office has existed since the early 1930s, after its conception by President Franklin D Roosevelt.
Greg Werkheiser, from the law firm Cultural Heritage Partners, which specialises in historic preservation, says that temporary alterations like “furniture and decor is completely up to the president’s discretion”.
“As long as they’re not damaging the permanent art and architecture, they can generally do whatever they want,” he tells BBC News.
Werkheiser argues that the Trump administration has shown extreme disregard for other historic sites in Washington, and through lawsuits has attempted to undermine the laws that require preservation.
Trump has undertaken a massive beautification project in Washington and has held three events in the past week to boast of the construction, even as his Republican party was trounced by Democrats in the midterm elections.
“The hypocrisy is that on the one hand he’s talking about the importance of preserving the Oval Office – which is legally meaningless because he can’t do it – and on the other hand he is absolutely taking an axe to the law that allows us to preserve other historic sites.”
Werkheiser notes Trump’s efforts to renovate the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, to build a new triumphal arch in the city, and to paint the granite exterior of the historic executive office building. His firm has filed lawsuits to block two of the projects.
In October, the president suggested in an interview with Time, external magazine that the Oval Office would need to be torn down due to security concerns from the US Secret Service.
“I said, ‘My ass, you can’t build a new one. This is a special place,'” Trump said at the time.
During the midterm election campaign Democrats criticised Trump’s redesigns, with former President Barack Obama saying that his golden tweaks have “got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory”.