As part of their closing argument, attorneys for former Sprint Cup champion Kurt Busch have accused his ex-girlfriend – who says Busch assaulted her inside his motorhome at Dover International Speedway in September 2014 – of lying during her testimony.
Jon Offredo of the Wilmington (Del.) News Journal reports that Busch’s lead defense attorney, Rusty Hardin, also wrote in his argument that the court should not reward Patricia Driscoll’s “perjury and scorched-earth approach of destruction” with the protection order she’s been seeking against the NASCAR star.
“There is only one person in this duo that needs protection, and it is not Patricia Driscoll – it is Kurt Busch,” Hardin added.
As for Driscoll’s own attorney, Carolyn McNeice, her summation argued that since Driscoll has said she wasn’t sure if Busch would attack her again, that should be enough to have a protection order issued.
Per Offredo’s report, McNeice also wrote that the argument from Busch’s attorney – no protection is necessary unless abuse is present and ongoing – would hinder others seeking protection from abuse in the future.
“Such a requirement would be a dangerous, impossible burden,” she wrote on that matter.
Driscoll has accused Busch of slamming her head against a wall in his motorhome three times during the September Chase for the Sprint Cup race weekend at Dover. Busch and his camp have repeatedly denied the charges, with Busch himself testifying last month that all he did in their encounter was cup Driscoll’s face and ask her to leave.
The hearing entered the national spotlight when as part of his testimony, Busch expressed his belief that Driscoll, the owner of a defense company and president of the Armed Forces Foundation, was a trained assassin.
Driscoll responded by saying Busch’s claims were taken from a movie script she had been working on and that it proved he needed counseling for issues of alcoholism and depression.
However, Hardin insists in his closing argument that she never rebutted Busch’s claims in court because she knew others would come forward.
“She easily could have retaken the stand in rebuttal and denied Mr. Busch’s testimony that she told him that she had killed people on behalf of the government,” Hardin writes, again per Offredo. “She chose not to testify under oath that Kurt’s testimony was false because she knew there were legions of people to whom she had repeated the same thing – some of whom believed her and some who did not.”
A judge is expected to soon make a final ruling on the hearing.