Letter from Democratic senator outlines more no-bid contracts and second botched reflecting pool redo
The US senator Sheldon Whitehouse has sent a letter to the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts detailing allegations from whistleblowers that some renovations were “rushed” and federal contracting laws “were ignored” to get the center ready for events, including for Donald Trump to receive the Fifa “peace prize” during the World Cup draw he hosted there in December.
“I have received allegations that the Kennedy Center has conducted rushed renovation and maintenance work with disregard to its commitments to Congress and the federal contracting standards the Center has long applied to its own procurements,” the Rhode Island Democrat wrote in the letter dated Thursday.
Whitehouse said that the allegations stem from a whistleblower disclosure submitted to him by the Government Accountability Project, and said that the disclosure conveys “the firsthand accounts of multiple former Center project managers, supported by contemporaneous documents and photographs” and “describes conduct sharply at odds with both the procurement standards the Center has long applied and the representations it has made to Congress”.
The senator wrote that the whistleblower disclosure includes allegations that “a cosmetic and rushed revamp of the Center’s Reflecting Pool is already rusting and peeling, and will need to be fully rebuilt”, and that Trump’s “preferred contractor cut corners...
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