Want to bookmark your favorite articles and stories to read or view later? Start your independent membership today.
Join us today
Already a member? Log in
A blue coating recently applied to the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was damaged in at least 85 places after workers rushed to fill the pool before the coating requested by Donald Trump had set.
A report commissioned by the contractor who carried out the work, obtained by The Washington Post, makes no mention of vandalism despite the president’s consistent assertions and administration officials’ sworn statements attributing the peeling liner to “botched installation.”
The report instead blames rushed work to meet Trump’s demands that the work be completed by the nation’s 250th birthday on July 4.
Atlantic Coating Inspection’s 75-page “failure analysis” reveals that Trump’s “American Flag Blue” coating buckled along eight of the pool basin’s 10 expansion joints.
The coating also blistered in nearly 40 places due to moisture or chemical vapors trapped underneath, and the paint peeled in nearly two dozen places before breaking away from the bottom of the pool and slapping on the surface, according to the report.
The Trump administration pumped nearly $20 million in public funds into the project, despite the president’s initial estimate that the renovation could be completed quickly for just $1.5 million.
It was in April.
The coating was finally replaced in recent weeks and the pool is still full this week.
Initial costs quickly climbed to nearly $7 million this summer after an initial no-bid contract was awarded to a Virginia-based company that did not appear to have previously held a contract with the federal government. That company, Atlantic Industrial Coatings LLC, received an additional $6.2 million in May, according to federal spending.
On June 3, the company received another $1 million, followed by more than $461,000 on June 15.
The shallow pool, which the president repeatedly touts as being “bigger than skyscrapers,” was initially renovated this summer in a dark shade of blue and equipped with “advanced nanobubble technology” to combat algae blooms that have long plagued the monument.
But shortly after workers filled the pool, the algae returned and the recently applied sealant in the blue shade requested by Trump began to peel off and float to the surface.
The monument was then fenced off and the pool was drained again to repair the damage and redo the work.
In July, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the Trump administration would not seek any new contracts after project costs ballooned to more than $17 million.
But spending records show the National Park Service awarded a nearly $2.7 million contract to American Ag Energy Inc. the following month to maintain, repair and rebuild water purification and wastewater treatment equipment.
Another company, Ohio-based Green Water Solutions, also known as Greenwater Services, also received $1.8 million to install a water purification system.
The Interior Department ignored a typical bidding process to distribute millions of taxpayer dollars to a handful of companies for the work, saying “only a limited number of contractors have the qualifications and equipment” for the work.
Officials said the need for renovations was so urgent that any delay would cause “serious harm” to the government, although it remains unclear exactly what that “harm” entailed.
In July, weeks after U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro publicly accused a former Olympian of “forcefully and violently” tearing down the blue line, she dismissed criminal charges against him entirely.
Pirro’s office admitted that the “American flag blue” sealant requested by Trump began peeling “almost immediately” once work was completed following the site’s recent renovations. The Interior Ministry “provided less than complete information at the outset of this case,” the filing said.
Only after the indictment was filed against David Hearn, 67, did the agency determine that the “damage was the result of botched installation and not vandalism,” according to Pirro’s office.
Trump then pushed Pirro to “reverse his hastily made decision,” although he also admitted that “contractor error” played a role in the damage.
A judge then blocked prosecutors from trying to charge Hearn a second time, ruling that a case against him would likely be the result of “political pressure” from the president.
Earlier this month, Washington Superior Court Judge Todd Edelman called the idea of re-suing Hearn “just fanciful” and permanently dismissed the case against him.
Hearn’s lawyers have called on the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office to launch an independent investigation into allegations of “widespread misconduct” surrounding the affair.
The administration “subjected an innocent man to a nightmare of wrongful arrest, felony indictment and public smear to cover up its own botched and rushed renovation of the Reflecting Pool,” attorneys Michael Bromwich, Steve Levin, Norm Eisen and Mary Dohrmann said in a statement last week:
“This administration has put the full weight of the federal government into pursuing Davey Hearn, and its actions surrounding his arrest and indictment demand full accountability,” they added.
Gn headline
