President Trump has claimed that United States Park Police have made several arrests in connection with what he described as deliberate sabotage of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington D.C., which underwent a multimillion-dollar renovation earlier this year.
“The United States Park Police have arrested multiple individuals for vandalizing our Nations magnificent Reflecting Pool,” Trump wrote on Truth Social late Saturday evening. “These are very serious crimes having to do with the destruction of National Monuments. Years in jail! Work will begin immediately on its repair.”
In a second post on Saturday, Trump described the alleged damage in greater detail, saying more arrests had followed. He provided no evidence for any of his claims about the nature of the damage, and neither the Park Police nor any other law enforcement agency had publicly confirmed any arrests as of the time of publication.
On Friday, Maryland resident and former Olympian David Hearn was arrested and charged with destroying government property. Hearn says he merely reached into the pool to touch one of the already dislodged blue pieces, and denies the charge.
Trump said that the pool would be drained and repaired quickly, and framed the alleged vandalism as an affront to American history. “We met with contractors today, will probably be forced to release and drain much of the water in order to do the necessary repairs,” he wrote. “What these terrible Vandals have done is a true affront to both Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and should be dealt with accordingly”.
‘A 250-foot long gash’
Trump described what he said was physical destruction to the pool’s newly renovated lining. “They took some form of knife or blade, and put a 250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work, competence, and money to build and complete,” he wrote Saturday. “They also poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the Pool.”
The president connected the alleged vandalism to the recent green color of the pool — again, without evidence. The pool turned green last week after being refilled following its renovation, in which its floor was repainted in a shade Trump calls “American flag blue.”
Aquatic ecologists and pool specialists told NPR the discoloration was caused by a natural bloom of algae from the genus Desmodesmus — a process scientists say is common in shallow, sun-exposed bodies of water, and one that may have been accelerated by the renovation disturbing the nutrient balance of the water.
A George Mason University professor who took water samples confirmed the algae was not toxic.
A renovation that grew in scope and cost
In April, Trump revealed his plans for the pool to be made “American flag blue,” in time for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4. The president also posted a fake image of himself and several of his administration officials in swimsuits, along with an unidentified woman in a bikini lounging in the water.
Trump defended the recent work in his Saturday post, writing: “The Reflecting Pool was never so beautiful as it was just one week ago, even going back to 1922 when it opened.” The pool opened in 1923.
The renovation project expanded significantly beyond the initial public cost estimate of $2 million, to more than $14 million by the time work was completed. A Virginia-based contractor received the no-bid contract. A separate Ohio-based company was paid approximately $1.7 million for nanobubble ozone technology deployed to treat the algae bloom.
The project was also the subject of a lawsuit filed in May by the Cultural Landscape Foundation, a nonprofit that argued the administration had bypassed required historic preservation reviews. A federal judge had not yet ruled on the case by the time the administration notified the court that work had been completed.
The White House has also provided no evidence that vandalism caused the pool’s discoloration, or any of the structural damage the president has described.
