Trump Nominates Project 2025 Author to Investigate His Own Reflecting Pool Project

Trump nominated Dennis Kirk, a co-author of the Project 2025 policy blueprint and a former Trump-administration personnel and intelligence-community watchdog official, to serve as the Interior Department's inspector general. The nomination, announced August 7, would put Kirk in position to oversee any investigation into the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation, which was carried out through a no-bid contract and whose vandalism-related criminal charges U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro's office recently dropped after concluding a contractor's flawed coating work, not vandalism, caused the damage.

Former Interior IG Mark Greenblatt, who was removed in the administration's earlier purge of inspectors general, said installing someone "avowedly aligned with the administration" in the watchdog role could chill whistleblowers and discourage auditors from reporting unfavorable findings about senior officials.

Senate Democrats have separately asked the Interior IG's office to investigate the Reflecting Pool contracting process. Kirk's nomination requires Senate confirmation and had not been scheduled for a vote as of this report.