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The center’s new president said prosecutors should look at its “criminal” debt and deferred maintenance, as the center announced dance and theater offerings that include some with nonunion casts.
May 19, 2025Updated 10:28 p.m. ET
Richard Grenell, whom President Trump installed as the president of the Kennedy Center, claimed Monday night that the center’s deferred maintenance and its deficit — two things commonly found at nonprofit arts organizations — were “criminal.” He said he would refer the matter to federal prosecutors.
Speaking to Mr. Trump and a group of board members at a dinner in the White House’s State Dining Room, Mr. Grenell said that officials who looked at the center’s budgets for the last two years had “found $26 million in phantom revenue, fake revenue.”
“It’s criminal,” Mr. Grenell said. “We’re going to refer this to the U.S. attorney’s office here.”
Kennedy Center officials attributed the deficit figures to a review undertaken by the center’s new chief financial officer, Donna Arduin. It was not immediately clear what officials thought might be criminal, or why they thought it merited the attention of federal investigators. Nonprofit arts organizations like the Kennedy Center rely on a mix of philanthropy and ticket sales and often run deficits when they fall short of projections. Just over a decade ago, the Metropolitan Opera ran a $22 million deficit.
Deborah F. Rutter, whom Mr. Trump fired as president when he took control of the center in February, was unavailable for comment. Mr. Trump took over the center after purging its formerly bipartisan board of Biden appointees, ousting its chairman, the financier David M. Rubenstein, and becoming chairman himself.
Christopher W. Ullman, a spokesman for Mr. Rubenstein, defended the center’s former management.
“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,” he said.
Speaking at the dinner, Mr. Trump reiterated his complaints about the physical condition of the center. “When I said, ‘I’ll do this,’ I hadn’t been there,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s the last time I’ll take a job without looking at it.” At one point, Mr. Trump compared his task at the Kennedy Center to his efforts to renovate Wollman Rink, an ice rink in New York’s Central Park, in the 1980s.
