Whistleblowers Say Interior Is Destroying Records on Trump’s DC Projects, but the Department Calls It ‘100% False’
House Democrats are ordering the Interior Department to preserve records on President Trump’s Washington construction projects after whistleblowers warned that documents are already being destroyed, CNN reported.
Multiple whistleblowers approached the House Natural Resources Committee in recent weeks with concerns that Interior is getting rid of records before Democrats take control in January, congressional sources said. The department oversees much of the parkland Trump wants to build on.
Interior flatly denies it. A spokesperson called the claims “100% false” and said, “The Department follows all federal records management obligations as directed by the Department’s ethics officials.”
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), the committee’s top Democrat and likely next chairman, sent letters to nine federal agencies and 27 companies and nonprofits ordering them to preserve records, his committee office said.
The agencies include Interior, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, Agriculture and Commerce. The private list ranges from Lockheed Martin, John Deere and Boeing to Chevron, ExxonMobil, Palantir, TikTok, UFC and the Trust for the National Mall.
Some of those companies have donated to Trump’s projects. The whistleblowers did not accuse them of destroying anything, CNN noted, but every recipient must certify that it will “identify and recover any deleted information” and “suspend any destruction and deletion practices.”
“For two years, this administration has stonewalled us and kept the American people in the dark,” Huffman said. “Those days of obstruction are over.” To agency officials and executives, he added: “save everything.”
Huffman told CNN his committee is preparing hearings and subpoenas aimed at projects such as the East Potomac golf course and the triumphal arch. “Everything is coming; it’s all coming,” he said. “It’s just going to be an entirely new day.”
He said the panel could stop some projects, “especially because we have standing to go to court if we have to.”
He told fellow Democrats in a letter last week that oversight would be “a large part” of the committee’s agenda in the new Congress, Politico reported.
The administration, meanwhile, is speeding up. The arch, new fencing at Lafayette Square, the East Potomac Golf Links rebuild and a Tidal Basin plan that includes the Garden of American Heroes are all set to move ahead over the next 60 days, sources told CNN.
The day after the midterm elections, Trump signed the last steel beam for the White House ballroom before it was raised.
“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,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told the Daily Beast.
The fight previews a two-year clash. With Democrats holding new majorities, committees like Natural Resources, long a backwater, are positioning themselves as front-line investigators of the president’s personal priorities.
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