The National Park Service confirmed in a court filing this week that the liner at the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was indeed cut with a sharp knife or razor, damaging the foam sealant.
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The pool was refilled between June 4 and June 9 following its $14-million renovation and was quickly targeted by vandals.
Frank Lands, deputy director of operations for the National Park Service, said in that the U.S. Park Police responded on June 9 to a complaint by the Park Service regarding damage to the pool, “including a caulk over the foam sealant that was cut with a and destruction of delaminating surface material.”
Additionally, about 70 fence post tops also were thrown into the pool, he said.
The timing of the cut reported to law enforcement indicates it may have occurred before the basin was fully refilled. Within a few days, pieces of the new blue liner were observed peeling up from the bottom.
Lands made the statement in a court document filed late Wednesday as part of a lawsuit filed by a liberal nonprofit organization attempting to halt the Trump administration’s work beautifying the Reflecting Pool.
A spokesman for the Interior Department told the Associated Press they initially thought the reported damage was an “isolated incident,” and delayed public notification about the damage to avoid copycats.
“At the time of the June 9 incident, the vandalism was under investigation and believed to be isolated. So as not to encourage deranged individuals, we did not announce what we hoped to be an isolated incident,”
Around the same time, park service staff “discovered another incident where fencing around the pool had been forcibly removed and thrown into the pool,’’ the spokesman said in an email to the AP.
Department officials soon noticed “recurring cases and videos of people ripping at the coating began to circulate. We then knew this was not an isolated incident, but a new trend to attempt to damage the Reflecting Pool,’’ the email said.
President Donald Trump and other administration officials have said for days that vandals had caused major damage to the liner and other problems.
The president said that “sick people” had sliced portions of the lining using razors and box cutters, although the national media appeared skeptical in its reporting.
On Truth Social earlier this week, Trump stated that six people had been arrested and seven others issued federal citations.
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The Interior Department said Thursday that one more person had been arrested, along with seven federal citations and 18 police reports filed.
The department did not provide details on the charges or identify those cited by police.
The National Park Service has since cleaned the pool by manually vacuuming the basin and using hydrogen peroxide and nanobubble ozone technology to kill the algae.
The Park Police released surveillance footage Wednesday evening and asked for help “identifying the individual depicted here in connection with a Destruction of Government Property investigation.”
The 30-second video shows “a person kneeling down, reaching into the reflecting pool and removing something from the water.” Police said it was taken last Friday afternoon.
After more than two months or work, the park service completed the renovations of the Reflecting Pool in early June. The 2,000-foot-long basin was drained and “a tinted polyurea liner was installed to waterproof and protect the concrete pool surface, and the pool was refilled with water,” Lands said.
President Trump on Wednesday described the liner as a “hard rubber surface” that had not been painted.
Lands also confirmed in his statement to the court that the parks agency plans to begin draining the Reflecting Pool for repairs after Independence Day celebrations.
The Cultural Landscape Foundation sued the administration in May to halt work on the project. The liberal advocacy group is now asking a federal judge to block further renovations.
“It is also not too late to correct course,” the group wrote in a filing Monday. It urged the administration to “engage with experts and the public, and make an informed decision about what is best based on the consultations mandated by the law, instead of once again rushing ahead with half-baked ideas.”
Meanwhile, Democrats are calling for formal investigations—not into the vandalism targeting the Reflecting Pool, but into the beautification project, saying no-bid contracts for the project were awarded to vendors with prior ties to Trump.
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