Steps that could destroy evidence

Will Trump be allowed to destroy the evidence, or no?

A group suing the Trump administration over renovations to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has accused federal officials of taking steps that could destroy evidence at the center of an ongoing legal dispute over damage to the landmark.

The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), one of the plaintiffs challenging the project, asked a federal judge this week to allow experts access to the Reflecting Pool to assess its condition before additional work is carried out. The group argues that National Park Service plans to perform further repairs could alter or eliminate evidence relevant to determining what caused problems with the newly resurfaced pool.

If Trump has anything to do with it that “could” should be “will”. If Trump can get the evidence eliminated, he will. This is Trump we’re talking about.

In a filing submitted on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, attorneys for the organization wrote that federal officials have made repeated claims about the cause of damage to the pool while also preparing to change conditions at the site.

“Defendants also have undertaken to destroy some of the very evidence that could shed light on the veracity of Defendants’ claims,” the filing states. The attorneys pointed to a declaration from a National Park Service official indicating that additional work was planned at the Reflecting Pool.

See above. If Trump can bury the evidence, he will.

The damage is central to an ongoing lawsuit brought by the Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), which originally sued the Department of the Interior in May, alleging that work on the Reflecting Pool violated federal historic preservation laws. TCLF argued that replacing the basin with a blue-colored synthetic liner altered a defining historic feature of the nearly century-old landmark without the reviews required under the National Historic Preservation Act and other federal laws. According to the organization, the Reflecting Pool’s dark gray basin has been a key design element since it opened in 1923.

Yes but you see Trump has to change everything so that everything reflects him as opposed to anyone or anything else.

New evidence of DOJ lawyers citing construction failures is key to the Cultural Landscape Foundation’s latest filing, which quotes DOJ lawyers as saying a “rushed and botched installation” was responsible for the problems and that the “most likely explanation” for the damage was faulty installation rather than intentional acts of vandalism.

The group’s attorneys argue those findings undermine previous representations made by Interior Department officials and raise new questions about what happened during the renovation. They also pointed to a DOJ court filing accusing Interior Department components of providing “less than fulsome information” about the resurfacing project and the issues that followed.

No no, not fulsome. Complete or generous or just plain full, but not fulsome. Wrong word alert. “Fulsome” modifies words like praise and flattery. It doesn’t mean “full” or extra extra full.

“Subsequent developments strongly suggest that some of Defendants’ assertions to date about the state of the Pool are false,” the filing states.

Yuh huh. They do.