Ric Grenell, the Interim Executive Director of the Kennedy Center, said an internal investigation reportedly found $26 million in fake revenue, adding that “people need to be prosecuted.”
“Our great new CFO [Donna Arduin] went through the 2024 and 2025 budgets of the Kennedy Center and found $26 million in phantom revenue,” Grenell said in a clip shared on X on Wednesday from a recent event at the White House for the famed venue.
“Fake revenue,” he added. “It’s criminal. We are going to refer this to the U.S. Attorney’s office here [Washington, D.C.]. We are lucky enough to have the Attorney General on the board of the Kennedy Center, who heard all the details today. She [Judge Jeanine Pirro] heard the details, and this is unacceptable in America to have … fraud on previous donors.”
Grenell recently spoke to Mark Halperin on his “2 Way” podcast, and the former U.S. ambassador to Germany and U.S. Envoy for Special Missions did not hold back about the alleged fraud they had discovered, promising that there would be an investigation by the Department of Justice and the FBI into the matter.
“What we just found, and we’re going to turn over to DOJ and the FBI for an investigation … our forensic new CFO went through the books for ’24 and ’25, found $26 million in phantom revenue,” Grenell said. “And so the problem that we have with $26 million in phantom revenue is they were telling the board that we had this revenue–We’re going to release all of the details to the FBI and to DOJ to look at this because it’s fraud.”
“They were literally lying about how the finances were,” he added. “And let me just finish with this, for the last nine months, well before we got there, we have been paying the staff at the Kennedy Center through debt reserves.
Hellbound and Down 