ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” states that the FBI and IRS are investigating Patricia Driscoll, former girlfriend of Kurt Busch, on allegations she mishandled money as executive director of the Armed Forces Foundation.
ESPN also reports that Driscoll faces a federal whistleblower complaint filed by a former foundation employee.
An ESPN report last month stated that documents showed that the Armed Forces Foundation had been repeatedly used as a bank to lend money for or pay various personal expenses, including bills for a private company Driscoll owns. ESPN also noted in that report that the Armed Forces Foundation’s federal tax filings and audit reports failed to match in some instances, the mismatches totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases.
ESPN states that documents the FBI has access to reveal personal expense questions, noting the foundation wrote a $15,000 check toward Driscoll’s legal fees to a law firm involved in her child-custody case, paid $6,315.22 for an infrared security camera shipped to her Maryland residence and picked up the tab for personal expenses on vacations to Paris and Morocco. ESPN also notes that in records available to the FBI that for 17 months in a 19-month stretch in 2012-13, the Armed Forces Foundation paid the credit card bill of Driscoll’s private security business, Frontline Defense Systems.
ESPN reports that Driscoll has declined to be interviewed by “Outside the Lines” multiple times and that after last month’s report she hired Atlanta-based attorney L. Lin Wood to “evaluate potential libel claims for false and defamatory reporting,’' stating that “the one-sided reporting of ESPN makes accusations that are blatantly and demonstrably false.’'
Driscoll was granted a protective order against Busch in February by a Kent County (Del.) Family Court Commissioner for an incident that took place in Busch’s motorhome in Sept. 2014 at Dover International Speedway. NASCAR suspended Busch after the commissioner’s decision. Busch eventually sat out three races before he was allowed to return. The Delaware Department of Justice decided not to pursue domestic abuse charges against Busch in March.