ANNALS OF TRUMPI$TAN: F.B.I. Evidence Team Visits Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool (Devlin Barrett & David A. Fahrenthold, NY Times, July 16, 2026)

From The New York Times:

F.B.I. Evidence Team Visits Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool

Officials surveyed the newly drained pool, where the floor began peeling soon after a $16 million repair job. President Trump has blamed vandals.

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Investigators examining the drained Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington on Wednesday.Credit...Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times

By Devlin Barrett and David A. Fahrenthold

Reporting from Washington

July 15, 2026

An F.B.I. evidence-gathering team visited the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Wednesday afternoon after the landmark was drained so that crews could repair peeling sections of its newly installed blue lining.Photos taken by a New York Times photographer showed people wearing F.B.I. insignia and standing on the dry, grime-covered pool floor. They appeared to be documenting the scene in detail, with some using laser-scanning and measuring equipment. A spokesperson for the F.B.I. said that the team was assisting the U.S. Park Police in investigating damage to the pool.The Trump administration spent more than $16 million to repair the century-old pool this year, giving out no-bid contracts to improve its filtration system and to apply a layer of waterproofing across the pool’s 2,000-foot-long concrete floor. The contracts were rushed through, bypassing normal procedures, so the pool would be ready for the country’s 250th birthday on July 4.But problems quickly appeared. Algae blooms turned the water bright green. And sections of the lining began to peel from the bottom, floating near the pool’s surface.

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A laser scanner being moved on the floor of the drained Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Wednesday.

Credit...Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times

President Trump has blamed both problems on vandals.

In social-media posts this week, he said the pool’s lining had been cut with a knife or box cutter.

“The slashes were 300 yards long, and the floor of the pool was cut and then pulled upward, with great force, by these thugs,” Mr. Trump wrote.

But so far, the Trump administration has not provided much evidence for those claims.

The National Park Service made a police report about vandalism on June 9, shortly after the work was completed. But that report described cuts in a different part of the pool, a strip of gray caulking around the pool’s edge. It did not mention damage to the blue lining that covers its broad floor, though the Interior Department said later that the blue section was “disturbed.”

In addition, the Justice Department has charged at least four people with crimes, accusing them of removing pieces of the pool’s lining. But the accounts of those incidents by prosecutors make it clear that they were not the original cause of the problems with the liner: All of the incidents happened days after the liner was first seen peeling up.