President Donald Trump has nominated Dennis Kirk, a Project 2025 author and a former White House official during his first administration, to lead the Interior Department’s Inspector General’s Office. This nomination arrives at a critical juncture as Democratic lawmakers demand a formal investigation into the flawed and costly renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
The prospect of Kirk overseeing the review drew immediate backlash from political opponents. Rep. Jared Huffman, D-California, the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, described Kirk as a “fake and fraudulent watchdog” in a statement issued on Aug. 5, two days before the official nomination was announced.
“Everyone should have their eyes wide open,” Huffman wrote in his critique. “Each and every thing this political puppet does will be in service of Donald Trump. It’s no surprise the White House suddenly wants its own man inside the one place that Trump’s cronies still have reason to fear.” Kirk’s eventual confirmation remains subject to a vote by the U.S. Senate.
The move came a week after the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. dropped felony vandalism charges against former Olympic athlete David Hearn. Prosecutors pointed to internal Interior Department documents which they indicated showed “the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism.”
The Department of Justice also pointed to a “rushed” construction process that sought to “complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026.” Despite these findings, President Trump, who for months blamed vandalism for the peeling paint and discolored water, claimed U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro “folded like an umbrella.”
“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro,” Trump wrote on social media on Aug. 1, adding: “There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!” On Aug. 7, the same day Kirk was officially nominated, Trump further pressured the legal process, stating that Pirro should “re-visit her hastily made decision” regarding the case.
An analysis of federal contract data by revealed significant financial discrepancies regarding the project. Twenty days before Trump first announced the project in April with an estimated $1.5 million cost, a company named Atlantic Industrial Coatings had already been contracted for nearly $6.9 million to begin work on April 3. Additionally, Green Water Solutions, an Ohio-based company, was awarded a no-bid contract for more than $1.7 million. By June, the total project cost had ballooned to over $16 million.
Kirk, who co-authored a chapter on the federal workforce in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 policy blueprint, previously served as an associate director of employee services at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Following the DOJ’s verdict on the pool renovation, Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, and Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico, formally requested that the Interior Department’s Office of the Inspector General open a probe.
The senators demanded an investigation into “what employees of the Department of the Interior knew – and when they knew it – regarding the peeling of the coating and other engineering issues at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.” The inquiry seeks to determine the extent of administrative oversight during the project’s rapid and expensive execution.
An analysis of federal contract data by found that 20 days before Trump first announced the project in April and its estimated $1.5 million cost, a company named Atlantic Industrial Coatings had already been co