President Donald Trump continues to insist damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was the result of vandalism, despite a Department of Justice motion filed on July 31 that placed the blame squarely on a contractor’s “botched” installation of the pool coating “and not vandalism as initially represented” by the Department of Interior.
According to a motion from U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro to dismiss a felony destruction of property charge against former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, it wasn’t until after Hearn was indicted that the Department of Interior provided prosecutors with “additional documents … indicating that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor … and the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026.”
“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Aug. 1. “I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM. … There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!”
That same day, Trump posted what he purported was video evidence that “[t]he material is being cut with a knife or a box cutter, for all to see!” There are some images and videos from reporters that indicate people on June 19 — once the peeling pool was already a major news event — broke off already-peeling coating or held pieces in their hands.
For weeks, Trump has maintained that vandals cut a “300-foot slit” in the pool’s new liner with either a knife or box cutter. (He later claimed that “thugs” cut a gash “300 yards long.”) The administration has never provided evidence of such extensive vandalism.
As we wrote on June 25, experts told us there were plausible explanations for the peeling related to the installation, rather than vandalism.
That was ultimately the conclusion reached by Pirro. And she provided detailed evidence that the DOI was long aware of installation issues related to the repairs of the reflecting pool.
“DOI provided less than fulsome information at the outset of this case,” Pirro wrote in the motion.
Pirro said she and other senior members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office began to question the DOI’s claim that nearly all the damage was due to vandalism when they did a visual inspection of the reflecting pool on July 17, and they “immediately noted extensive damage throughout the now-drained pool.” Pirro said she demanded the DOI provide further information, and that the subsequent information “strongly suggest[ed] that a rushed and botched installation by [Atlantic Industrial Coatings], the primary contractor, led to the damage to the lining of the Reflecting Pool. It was not until [prosecutors] repeatedly reached out to DOI dozens and dozens of times that DOI slowly started trickling information to [prosecutors]. Had DOI been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment.”
“Specifically, the newly released documents reveal that work on installing the lining almost immediately fell behind, due to a combination of very rainy and windy weather, repeated failures of testing on the sealing of the expansion joints, and delays in obtaining sealing product at the worksite,” Pirro wrote. “The rush to complete the project led to hasty and botched work that was not remediated before the project was finished and the fencing removed.”
“Almost immediately after work was initially completed, peeling was observed along the pool perimeter,” the motion states. A National Park Service engineer wrote an email on June 11 that “stated that the cause of the damage was contractor error via ‘overspray.’”
That email was written more than three weeks before Interior Secretary Doug Burgum appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” and insisted the liner “didn’t peel off. There … was vandalism. There was box cutters.”
Asked by CNN’s Dana Bash if he was “100% sure that what happened with the liner was vandalism” and if he “can prove it,” Burgum responded on July 5: “Oh, yes, absolutely, Dana. And we drain it, and we have got all the photographs, we can see. I mean, there’s no possible way … I’m not sure why you and others in the media think that you want to keep trying to question whether or not — think, this is an industrial liner. Every farmer and rancher in America that’s had their pickup liner lined by this sprayed-on liner knows that you literally — literally, it would never just like peel off or fall off. … And it’s the size of eight football fields. And the only way you can end up with actual slices in one spot and not the other is that someone physically cut it.”
But according to Pirro’s motion, a July 20 inspection by contractors “confirmed that overspray and delamination had occurred, again pointing to contractor error. Finally, a recent visual inspection showed damage throughout the Reflecting Pool, even in the middle of the pool, where a vandal would not likely attempt to peel the lining. Given all of this newly discovered information, it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The motion was an about-face for Pirro, who in a July 2 press conference said there “was an effort, a violent effort, to rip up the sealant from the bottom of the pool” and that there was “tremendous evidence” that Hearn “damaged the pool.”
Pirro said then that she had visited the pool the day before and “someone intentionally did a tremendous amount of damage to the pool, and you can actually see where all the cutting is. They took a sharp object and cut for many feet along the pool.”
We reached out to the Department of Interior for comment about the motion, and its claim that the DOI withheld important information from prosecutors. The press office pointed us to an X post from Burgum on Aug. 1, in which he continued to insist the damage to the reflecting pool was done by vandals.
“The evidence is clear, vandals have repeatedly caused damage to the Reflecting Pool. Some of these acts were even caught on camera,” Burgum wrote. “We also provided the U.S. Attorney’s office expert and eyewitness testimony to the damage done by vandals and provided every piece of evidence they asked for in the requested time line detailing each area of damage at the pool. … We won’t back down to deranged people who want to destroy, deface, or degrade our monuments.”
We also reached out to Atlantic Industrial Coatings for comment on Pirro’s motion, but we did not get a response. However, the company posted a message on its website on June 21 stating that — in conjunction with the National Park Service — it had identified “some areas in the Reflecting Pool that require repairs.”
“These areas are a very small part of the massive 7 acre project, and do not indicate a failure of the liner,” according to the statement. “As soon as its feasible for the Park, the pool will be drained and AIC will be back to make those needed repairs as part of the warranty.”
The Department of Interior awarded a no-bid contract on April 3 to Atlantic Industrial Coatings to paint the reflecting pool, with supplemental agreements issued through June 15 to total $14.7 million. The agency justified not getting bids from various contractors by saying the project was urgent and needed to be completed by July 4.
In addition to Hearn, a handful of others have been charged with vandalism of the reflecting pool, and three face misdemeanor charges of destruction of property under $1,000, the New York Times reported. Hearn was the only one to face a felony charge.
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