Donald Trump holds a model of an arch during a ballroom dinner at the White House in Washington DC on 15 October. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
President Donald Trump’s Interior Department is getting rid of records tied to his Washington construction projects, while the administration races to push those projects forward before Democrats take control of Congress in January, according to whistleblowers.
Several credible whistleblowers have approached the Democratic staff of the House Natural Resources Committee in recent weeks with concerns that the department is disposing of documents ahead of forthcoming scrutiny, congressional sources told CNN.
The Interior Department, which oversees much of the national parkland Trump wants to build on, called the claims “100 percent false.”
“The Department follows all federal records management obligations as directed by the Department’s ethics officials,” a spokesperson said.
Democrats aren’t taking any chances, though. On Tuesday, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), the committee’s top Democrat and incoming chairman, plans to send letters demanding that Interior “preserve all records and data” relevant to the panel’s oversight.
Letters are also going to the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Agriculture Department and companies that have donated to Trump’s projects, including Lockheed Martin and John Deere. The whistleblowers did not accuse those companies of destroying documents.
Every recipient must certify compliance. That means suspending deletion practices and working to “identify and recover any deleted information.”
The letters offer an early look at what Huffman’s committee plans to investigate. Two projects lead the list – Trump’s planned golf course at East Potomac and his triumphal arch. Aides expect a high-profile hearing early in the new Congress and are prepared to issue subpoenas if the administration stonewalls.
“Everything is coming; it’s all coming,” Huffman told CNN. “It’s just going to be an entirely new day.”
Huffman said the committee could stop some of the projects outright, “especially because we have standing to go to court if we have to.”
The White House appears to be moving in the opposite direction. Sources close to the approval process told CNN the administration is showing new urgency to get as far as it can by year’s end. Over the next 60 days, the triumphal arch, new fencing at Lafayette Square, the East Potomac Golf Links and a Tidal Basin plan that includes Trump’s Garden of American Heroes are all set to advance through federal approvals or historic preservation reviews.
Preservationists are alarmed.
“We’re going to start seeing all of these things happening simultaneously,” said Charles Birnbaum of the Cultural Landscape Foundation. “It is going to be like a storm where it plays out until the new Congress is seated.”
The White House made no apologies for the pace.
“President Trump is moving at lightning speed because we don’t have time to waste in our mission to make America greater than ever before,” spokesperson Davis Ingle said.
The day after the midterms, Trump went to the White House ballroom construction site and signed the last steel beam before it was raised.
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