Burgum, Trump still blame pool damage on vandals
The Hill · C · trust 58/100
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has been sticking to his original story that vandals were responsible for damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, despite a court filing from U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro saying the department had evidence a “botched” installation was to blame.
© Julia Demaree Nikhinson, Associated Press
President Trump, who has repeatedly railed against the alleged vandalism and efforts to hinder his controversial beautification efforts in Washington, D.C., has embraced Burgum’s version of events, saying Monday that Pirro made a mistake and “folded like an umbrella” in the face of an aggressive judge.
“Instead of going after the people that did it, the judge went after and — went after her department,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “And I guess she choked. I don’t know what the hell happened.”
“I was disappointed with Jeanine Pirro, really disappointed with Jeanine Pirro,” he added. “She folded like an umbrella.”
Pirro’s office had initially charged former U.S. Olympian David Hearn with felony destruction of property over damage to the seal coating of the Trump-renovated Reflecting Pool, but, in a court filing late last week , it said the Department of the Interior (DOI) had “provided additional documents ... showing that the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism as initially represented by DOI.”
Her filing particularly cited an internal email from a National Park Service engineer that raised concerns about the coating peeling eight days before Hearn’s arrest.
Burgum, like Trump, swiftly pushed back.
“The evidence is clear, vandals have repeatedly caused damage to the Reflecting Pool. Some of these acts were even caught on camera,” Burgum said in a post on X.
“We also provided the U.S. Attorney’s office expert and eyewitness testimony to the damage done by vandals and provided every piece of evidence they asked for in the requested time line detailing each area of damage at the pool,” he added.
Meanwhile, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, told The Hill that he plans to investigate the Reflecting Pool saga if his party retakes the House next year.
“They’re lighting taxpayer money on fire and bungling the maintenance and the repair of important public resources in the nation’s capital,” he said.
Huffman added that Democrats will specifically look into the contracting process. The Trump administration has given no-bid contracts for work on the Reflecting Pool , an unusual procedure for non-emergency federal work, according to reports from The New York Times.
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Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has been sticking to his original story that vandals were responsible for damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, despite a court filing from U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro saying the department had evidence a “botched” installation was to blame.
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