The Trump administration reportedly spent more than $527,000 mounting a statue of slave-owning Founding Father Caesar Rodney in Washington, after the monument was taken down in its previous home of Delaware in 2020.
As part of efforts to spruce up the capital ahead of American 250th anniversary celebrations, the National Park Service spent at least $527,226 installing the statue in Freedom Plaza, near the White House, on an expedited no-bid contract that nearly doubled original price estimates, reports Mother Jones, citing contract documents.
The rush job to install a statue of Rodney was an unethical and unusual use of taxpayer funds, Scott Amey, general counsel of the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, told the magazine.
“By definition, urgency should be used when a delay would result in a serious injury to the government,” he said. “It’s inconceivable to think that a statue for a holiday celebration meets that standard.”
The Independent has contacted the Department of the Interior for comment.
The statue was first installed in 1923 in Wilmington, Delaware, where city officials in 2020 removed the monument amid the Black Lives Matter movement and efforts to take down tributes to slave-owners.
Rodney owned some 200 enslaved people in his lifetime.
“Much like George Washington, Caesar Rodney was a slave owner: his family’s large plantation, Byfield, was worked by slave labor,” according to the National Parks Service. “Despite inheriting the institution and holding financials ties to it, Rodney did take public action to abolish slave trading within the Delaware colony.”
Rodney is also remembered for embarking on a harrowing, nearly 80-mile ride on horseback while seriously ill in July of 1776 to help break the deadlocked vote on whether Delaware would join other colonies in declaring independence.
The president has plowed millions of dollars in fast-track contracts into beautifying Washington as part of the America 250 celebrations. Critics accuse the administration of paying too much and disclosing too little.
The Trump administration reportedly handed out a secret, no-bid contract for repairs in Lafayette Park, and it reportedly used a similar no-bid process for the $13.1 million contract to repair the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
The latter deal featured “excessive” profit margins and “inflated overhead,” according to federal documents, per a National Parks Service analysis obtained by The New York Times.
Meanwhile, the events company that helped plan Trump’s infamous January 6, 2021, rally directly preceding the storming of the Capitol, has reportedly been handed $13 million in no-bid contracts from the administration for various projects.
The president has been accused of financial irregularities on another of his signature Washington constructions, the effort to build a lavish new ballroom at the White House.
The White House initially claimed the build-out would cost about $200 million and be privately funded, though the project’s contractor has now warned the administration that total costs could reach $600 million, with at least half of that expected to be covered by taxpayers.
This week, the administration reportedly redirected hundreds of millions of dollars originally designated for Secret Service recruitment and training, in a move a source familiar with the matter told The Washington Post would involve using some government funds on the ballroom project and wider East Wing renovation.
The Trump administration, as part of its crusade against “woke” ideology, has made a point of restoring tributes to American historical figures who owned slaves, including restoring the names of military bases named for Confederate figures.
