Five people have been arrested and an additional five cited for vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, President Trump said Monday as he blamed political saboteurs for the peeling paint and a green algae bloom wrecking his much-hyped $14 million renovation.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that vandals “very violently” cut close to a 300-foot gash in the pool’s new “American flag blue” lining with “a box cutter or knife of some kind.”
A White House official added that 14 police reports were filed in connection with vandalism on the Reflecting Pool, including one report regarding the large gash Trump described.
National Guard members and officers from various regional law enforcement agencies have been patrolling the area around the Reflecting Pool since this weekend, when Trump said “disgraceful vandalism” was responsible for damage to the newly renovated pool. He said the pool would once again be drained and fixed.
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“We had people lifting up – it’s not a lot of damage, but we’ll probably have to let the water out and fix it,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday.
Neither the president nor the White House has offered specific evidence that the pool was purposefully vandalized, and questions remain whether the fast-tracked sealing and painting of the pool may be to blame.
The Trump administration awarded Atlantic Industrial Coatings a no-bid $6.89 million contract in April to resurface the pool with his color choice, “American flag blue.” Millions more were added to the contract in May and June, bringing the total cost for the paint job and waterproofing to nearly $15 million.
U.S. Park Police arrested David “Davey” Hearn, a former U.S. Olympian, on Friday on suspicion of touching a strip of the pool that had become dislodged; Hearn told The Washington Post he didn’t vandalize the pool. Authorities have not released the identities of the other individuals arrested.
Sara Bronin, a law professor at George Washington University, said in an email that the statute the administration is relying on has been used to prosecute people for destroying federal property, desecrating Arlington National Cemetery and destroying military documents, among other things — not for touching the water at the Reflecting Pool.
“The passersby charged this week seem to have been peaceably bearing witness to the damage caused by someone else entirely — the Trump administration itself — and it’s hard to imagine a court allowing the charges to advance any further,” Bronin said.
Trump said the Interior Department, which oversees the U.S. Park Police, has photos of the knife-cutting incident, but it remains unclear if they will be released.
The Interior Department confirmed the number of arrests, citations and police reports and said that Park Police “will continue to carry out their number one duty of upholding law and order in our nation’s capital.”
This story has been updated to include a comment from a law professor.
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