The contractor that renovated the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has told the Trump administration that flaws in both its work and its repair plan caused the pool’s new blue liner to peel and break loose, according to The New York Times. The company said the damage was not caused by vandalism.

The Times reviewed government documents showing that Atlantic Industrial Coatings accepted responsibility for the liner’s deterioration and damage, despite the administration’s repeated claims — and related prosecutions — that vandals were responsible.

“President Trump has repeatedly blamed vandals wielding knives or box cutters for damage to the pool’s ‘American flag blue’ liner, even after the Justice Department dropped charges that it had brought against people accused of vandalizing the national landmark,” the Times reported. “But the documents, which have not previously been reported, make clear that the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, found problems in both the design and the execution of the renovation. The documents include Atlantic’s reports to the government as well as daily progress updates from the National Park Service over the past two months.”

According to the documents, Atlantic acknowledged its own errors in an Aug. 14 report and provided additional details on Sept. 2. The Justice Department, which had charged several people with vandalizing the pool in early July, began moving to dismiss those cases on July 31, the Times reported.

The company attributed some sections of the failed renovation to “human oversight,” saying workers had not applied enough chemical primer to bond the liner’s layers. Atlantic said the larger problem was in the repair plan specified in the contract, which called for using two incompatible chemicals in the liner layers.

“The chemical on top reached a temperature hotter than what the compound underneath could withstand, and the heat caused the bottom layer to blister and come loose, the documents show. The contractor said it had not expected that outcome because it was very uncommon to mix the two products in that way,” the Times reported.

The newspaper said the failure showed the consequences of the administration’s rushed effort to renovate the pool in the spring. Seeking to complete the work before the nation’s 250th birthday on July 4, the government bypassed competition and awarded Atlantic a no-bid contract for an untested approach designed in part by the general manager of one of President Trump’s golf clubs.

The government has agreed to pay Atlantic $14.7 million for the work, according to the Times. The contractor has said the pool remains under warranty and is eligible for additional repairs. The warranty and the contractor’s acknowledgment of design and installation problems make the repair process, rather than a vandalism investigation, central to resolving the pool’s damage.

Interior Department spokeswoman Katie Martin nevertheless appeared to maintain that vandals caused the damage, saying they had “repeatedly reached into the pool and ripped at the coating,” the Times reported.

In July, federal prosecutors acted on President Donald Trump’s vandalism claims and announced the indictment of former Olympic canoeist David Hearn on a felony vandalism charge for allegedly pulling up part of the liner. Prosecutors later moved to dismiss the charges against Hearn and three other people accused of vandalism.

“Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington, wrote that the Interior Department had misled her staff about the extent to which the damage had stemmed from vandalism rather than a ‘botched installation,’” the Times reported.