A top Trump official has upped the ante in the administration’s war on Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool vandals, claiming that “multiple” threatening messages against the president had been left behind but not reported.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told Fox News on Saturday that before the pool was filled, there were “multiple cases, both on the grass, and in the pool, that we had not reported ... where people were making these threatening messages to President Trump.”
He said seven arrests have been made over alleged vandalism of the pool, and “18 police reports.” Court records so far show only one person charged, an Olympian who has denied causing any damage to the pool.
“The Reflecting Pool, part of the 1922 Lincoln Memorial, it is part of the monument, so when people are using box cutters to do vandalism on this thing, it’s the same as if they were throwing paint on Lincoln’s statue in the eyes of the law,” Burgum said.
That claim has also been made by Trump, who blamed reports of the pool’s lining coming up in sheets on vandals deliberately pulling it apart.
But the president also claimed in May that the new lining was “very, very strong.”
“This will last at least 50 years, it’s very very strong, if you had a knife, I don’t want to give anybody any ideas, if you had a knife you can’t even cut it,” he claimed.
Neither the Department of Interior, nor the White House, have provided any evidence to back up their claims that damage to the pool is a result of vandalism. But a federal court filing by the National Park Service on Wednesday also made the claim about box cutters, again without any evidence.
Speaking to Fox, Burgum said there were multiple instances of damage that had not been reported on.
He did not go into detail about the threatening messages he cited, or what form they were made in.
The lawn of the National Mall was defaced with the numbers ‘86 47′ earlier in June. Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted over a post he shared on Instagram of shells on the beach spelling out the same numbers.
Eighty-six is a term commonly used in the hospitality industry to reference removing something from a menu or banning a patron from an establishment. Trump is both the 45th and 47th president of the United States.
Burgum and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
