A CNN supercut on Saturday exposed the lengths the Trump administration went to bolster false claims that “vandals” sabotaged the Reflecting Pool in Washington D.C., after the Department of Justice on Friday admitted by “a rushed and botched installation by AIC, the primary contractor.”
Trump and his team for months have touted renovations at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which the president claimed in April was “decaying.” In May, the Trump administration granted a “no-bid” contract to renovate the pool as administration officials made it clear Trump wanted the color of the liner “changed for the country’s birthday party on July 4,” the New York Times reported. The president called the color “American flag blue.” At a small business summit in May, Trump described the new liner as “very strong … if you had a knife, you can’t even cut it, it’s so strong, so powerful, it’s like powerful rubber. It is beautiful. Sealed.”
“The cost to repaint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool … ballooned to more than $14.65 million,” ABC News reported in June.
Following the restoration, algae and liner issues plagued the pool, prompting the president to make various unsubstantiated claims that the memorial was “damaged by deranged vandals” who cut increasingly large “slashes” into the liner with a “box cutter or knife.”
In mid July, the pool was drained once again ”to fix the scars and damage that was done by the vandals,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Olympian David Hearn was among those accused by the Trump administration of sabotaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn was “indicted July 2 on one count of felony destruction of property” after “U.S. Park Police alleged Hearn grabbed and tugged at a loose section of the pool’s coating on June 19, continuing after a National Park Service employee told him to stop,” Fox News reports.
In an interview, Hearn “acknowledged immersing his hand and touching the peeling sealant during a pause in a bike ride, but … said that is all he did,” according to the Times.
Lawyers for Hearn called the charges “outrageous,” adding they “should be alarming to every American.”
The president and his team’s numerous false claims were rehashed on CNN This Morning Saturday as the network rolled the tape on their efforts to blame the Reflecting Pool’s problems on vandals.
“Somebody went in with a knife and cut it. They cut it up good,” Trump said to reporters on June 23.
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“I think 209,300 foot lit right through it, slit, right through it. Probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind,” Trump said in a separate Oval Office interview. “At the right time you’ll see it, You’ll see it. You’ll see it in court.”
At a June 22 press conference, Trump Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed the damage on “deranged individuals, many of them longtime donors to the Democrat party, to Barack Obama.”
“He damaged this pool,” U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro forcefully declared at a July 2 press conference regarding Hearn’s arrest. Asked for evidence of damage during that presser, Pirro told a reporter, “Well, when I file a charge, I’ll be happy to show you a picture. All right.”
On Friday, Pirro moved to dismiss the charges against Hearn.
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In a court filing, the Department of Justice said new evidence “significantly [undermines] the evidentiary basis for the indictment” and laid blame for the false allegation at the hands of the Department of Interior (DOI).
“Had DOI been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment,” Pirro wrote in a motion to dismiss the charges. “DOI’s failure to fully and accurately provide information to USAODC undermined the government’s ability to abide by these responsibilities.”
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