New images have captured federal employees inspecting damage in multiple spots of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after President Donald Trump’s botched $17 million renovation.
Experts believe the lining troubles, which saw patches of lining floating to the top of the water, are likely due to a shoddy installation job by the no-bid contractor selected for the project.
Trump, who has raged against the damage to the pool, claiming nonexistent vandals destroyed it, ordered the entire pool to be drained while the damage is taken care of.
The Washington Post captured several images showing federal employees gathering evidence in several areas that have visible damage.
An evidence team from the FBI had visited the drained pool last week to assist U.S. Park Police in their investigation into the nonexistent nefarious actors, The New York Times reported.
Trump has grown obsessed over his disastrous renovations, the cost of which has ballooned to $17 million. The lining of the pool has peeled in several areas, and the water turned green as the result of an algae bloom.
Interior Secretary Doug Bergum has said he was treating the algae like he would the Iranian Navy as his department cooks up ways to mitigate the bloom.
Trump has blamed the shoddy “renovation” that he ordered on apparent vandals, claiming they committed “very serious crimes having to do with the destruction of National Monuments,” and will spend “years in jail!”
He also claimed that the apparent vandals “took some form of knife or blade,” and made a 250-foot-long gash. In another Truth Social rant this week, the president increased the size of the nonexistent gash to 300 yards.
“The slashes were 300 yards long, and the floor of the pool was cut and then pulled upward, with great force, by these thugs,” Trump wrote.
Trump has also claimed that the bad actors “poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the Pool.”
Neither the president nor his officials have provided any evidence for his claims regarding the nature of the damage.
Trump’s “vandals” narrative is even at odds with reports from his own government, The New York Times reported.
The Times reviewed internal documents that found two National Park Service workers did indeed find two small cuts within the foam lining of the pool’s expansion joints, but that those cuts were entirely unrelated to the “American Flag Blue” Trump-ordered paint coating that has been floating up to the water’s surface.
The documents also found the cuts were unrelated to the blooming algae problem.
The Department of Justice has charged at least four people with crimes related to the Reflecting Pool, accusing them of removing pieces of the lining.
But even federal prosecutors have admitted that those charged were not responsible for the liner problems, as all of the incidents happened after the liner was seen peeling up.
At one point during the fiasco, the president claimed he inspected the damage himself, although there was no evidence of that visit taking place.
“Work will begin immediately on fixing the seriously vandalized Reflecting Pool. I just inspected it, and could only say to myself, and those gathered around me, WOW, who would do such a thing?” Trump wrote. “SICK, DERANGED PEOPLE! We will fix it?”
