{"id":1124724,"date":"2026-08-01T20:38:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T20:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1124724\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T20:38:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T20:38:19","slug":"trump-disputes-his-own-justice-departments-findings-on-reflecting-pool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1124724\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump disputes his own Justice Department\u2019s findings on Reflecting Pool"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">US President \u2060Donald Trump posted on Saturday \u2060that he disagrees with his \u2060own Justice Department\u2019s findings that a flawed installation, not vandalism, caused the lining of the newly renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington to peel.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cI disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of \u200cColumbia, on the Reflecting Pool,\u201d Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. \u201cI don\u2019t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM.\u201d<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">In a court filing on Friday, Pirro and Assistant US Attorney Michael Spence asked a judge to drop the Trump administration\u2019s case against David Hearn, 67, a \u2060former Olympian it had accused of vandalising the pool, which has become a flashpoint over Trump\u2019s \u200cefforts to remake Washington.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The renovated pool had quickly developed blooms of algae that tinted the water green, while pieces of the blue lining \u200chad peeled off.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Trump, facing criticism over the US$14.7 million renovation, had repeatedly blamed the problems \u2060on vandals he \u2060alleged had intentionally sabotaged the project.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">In their filing on Friday, federal prosecutors said the latest documents they received from \u200cthe Department of the Interior \u201cindicated a rushed and flawed installation process, with repeated failures of the lining during the installation process, \u200cand extensive \u200cpeeling of the lining throughout the Reflecting Pool\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US President \u2060Donald Trump posted on Saturday \u2060that he disagrees with his \u2060own Justice Department\u2019s findings that a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1124725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5311],"tags":[306053,134952,32,22177,286495,177879,306056,287588,23108,49,978,306055,306054,659,48868,6709],"class_list":["post-1124724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-david-hearn","tag-department-of-the-interior","tag-donald-trump","tag-justice-department","tag-lincoln-memorial-reflecting-pool","tag-michael-spence","tag-pirro","tag-reflecting-pool","tag-truth-social","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-us-attorney-for-the-district-of-columbia","tag-us-park-police","tag-usa","tag-vandalism","tag-washington"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117022183064504624","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1124724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1124724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1124724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1124725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1124724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1124724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1124724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}