David A. Fahrenthold

So I cover government contracts.

I write about how the government spends its money and the way that it chooses the people it pays.

President Trump, in his second term, has been obsessed and very ambitious about changing Washington, renovating, repairing.

improving the physical surroundings of downtown Washington, the place where he works.

And those projects are happening all over, and I was really interested in seeing how those projects came together.

What were those contracts like?

Who was getting paid?

How were they getting paid?

And how did they get selected?

And my curiosity led me to this one particularly, the renovation of Lafayette Park, particularly because of what I found in government contracting records, or more precisely, what I didn't find.

The contract to fix this park is secret.

It doesn't exist in any of the public databases of government spending.

Yes, very unusual for something like this.

We're not building a missile launch site.

This is not a bunker.

There seemed to be no reason why it would be secret.

And then when we did get a copy of that contract, the story we pieced together was even more interesting.

Now, what needs to happen in Lafayette Park is fairly simple.

There's a couple of fountains built in the 1960s that don't work.

And after talking to many, many people about Washington fountains, I've come to the personal belief that fountains are just a demonstration of man's hubris, the belief that we can harness and conquer nature.