Trump admin unable to explain 'serious injury' threat as reflecting pool costs explode

The cost to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has skyrocketed to $13.1 million, ballooning more than sevenfold from Donald Trump's initial $1.8 million estimate — with little public explanation for why the price tag exploded for a no-bid contract awarded to a Trump administration-handpicked contractor.

According to reporting from The New York Times, Virginia-based Atlantic Industrial Coatings received the lucrative no-bid contract for the project. The Trump administration bypassed the requirement to seek competing bids by claiming the situation was so urgent that any delay would cause "serious injury" to the government — though the administration has continued to refuse to explain what that injury would entail.

Instead, the administration cited Trump's desire to complete the work before the nation's 250th birthday on July 4.

Public contracting records, examined by the Times' David A. Fahrenthold and Luke Broadwater, do not explain why the cost increased so dramatically. Katie Martin, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, claimed the higher price "reflects the effort necessary to expedite the timeline of completing the leak prevention coating project — more people, more materials, more equipment and longer hours ahead of our 250th."

However, government documents obtained by The New York Times reveal that the contract's current $13.1 million value matches, down to the dollar, an offer submitted by Atlantic Industrial Coatings in mid-May. That offer included a 20 percent profit margin for the contractor.

On Monday, the Cultural Landscape Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to landscape architecture, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court seeking to halt the paint job. The foundation argues that the Trump administration ignored a federal law requiring advance scrutiny of projects that alter historic landmarks.

The ballooning contract cost and lack of competitive bidding raise questions about whether taxpayer money is being steered to politically connected contractors under the guise of emergency expedited timelines, the Times is reporting.