The current president of the Kennedy Center, Richard Grenell, accused the institution’s previous leadership of ‘fraud’ at a board dinner held at the White House on Monday, The Washington Post reported. Deborah F. Rutter, the Center’s previous president who was fired in February following the appointment of a new board of trustees that elected Trump as their chairman, called the accusation a ‘malicious attempt to distort the facts’.
Grenell claimed that the Center’s new CFO, Donna Arduin, found $26 million in ‘phantom revenue’ in the 2024-25 budget. ‘It’s criminal,’ he said, ‘we’re going to refer this to the U.S. attorney’s office.’ In a speech at the same dinner, Trump accused the previous leadership of wasting millions of dollars and of implementing inappropriate programming, quoting (among other examples), ‘lesbian-only Shakespeare’.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Rutter said she was ‘deeply troubled by the false allegations regarding the management of the Kennedy Center being made by people without the context or expertise to understand the complexities involved in nonprofit and arts management,’ adding that during her tenure, the Center’s operating budget for each upcoming fiscal year was approved by the board. ‘In addition, in line with established management best practices, the Finance, Audit, and Executive Committees of the Board – composed of appointees from President Trump’s first term – had full transparency into all financial transactions and decisions.’
Former chairman of the board David Rubenstein also issued a statement, confirming that ‘with full transparency, the financial reports were reviewed and approved by the Kennedy Center’s audit committee and full board as well as a major accounting firm’.
In her statement, Rutter suggested that current leadership may be trying to find excuses for their own financial mismanagement, writing that ‘perhaps those now in charge are facing significant financial gaps and are seeking to attribute them to past management, which would include the Board of Trustees, some of whom were appointed by President Trump in his previous term.’
