Aug 1 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump posted on Saturday that he disagrees with his own Justice Department’s findings that a flawed installation, not vandalism, caused the lining of the newly renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., to peel.
“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. “I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM.”
In a court filing on Friday, Pirro and Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Spence asked a judge to drop the Trump administration’s case against David Hearn, 67, a former Olympian it had accused of vandalizing the pool, which has become a flashpoint over Trump’s efforts to remake Washington.
The renovated pool had quickly developed blooms of algae that tinted the water green, while pieces of the blue lining had peeled off.
Trump, facing criticism over the $14.7 million renovation, had repeatedly blamed the problems on vandals he alleged had intentionally sabotaged the project.
In their filing on Friday, federal prosecutors said the latest documents they received from the Department of the Interior “indicated a rushed and flawed installation process, with repeated failures of the lining during the installation process, and extensive peeling of the lining throughout the Reflecting Pool.”
Trump suggested that prosecutors overstated the effects of a bad installation. “There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!” he wrote on Saturday.
In a subsequent social media post, Trump included a previously released U.S. Park Police video that he claimed showed vandals at the site while workers were in the pool removing algae.
“Look for yourselves at the VANDALISM that took place at The Reflecting Pool,” he wrote, although it is not clear in the clip whether people are merely reaching into the water to remove pieces that were already peeling.
Pirro’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Bhargav Acharya in Toronto and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Editing by Sergio Non and Alistair Bell)
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