(THREAD) In a Sunday morning tweet, President Trump—citing reporting by @ProPublica and @TexasTribune—tried to distance himself from a privately built section of border wall where the base is already eroding. A brief recap of how we got to this place...
2/ Backed by Trump supporters, Tommy Fisher built a 3-mile border wall where others could not, directly on the banks of the Rio Grande. This privately funded “Lamborghini” of walls helped Fisher win $1.7 billion in federal contracts.
3/ But, as @Perla_Trevizo and @JinATX reported, only months after going up, the structure was already showing signs of runoff erosion, with engineers and hydrologists saying it was in danger of falling into the river, if not fixed.
propublica.org/article/he-bui…
propublica.org/article/he-bui…
4/ After our initial report on Fisher’s wall, one South Texas resident posted a video showing him shaking one of the structure’s bollards that had become loose enough to be shaken with just one hand:
5/ Last week, Fisher—who is being sued by the fed. govt. & the National Butterfly Center for the alleged threat his wall poses to the river & to neighboring property—agreed to an engineering inspection and to settle on fixes for parts of wall that violate a treaty with Mexico.
6/ Fisher and his allies have said they would like to donate or sell the fence to the U.S. government, which has not agreed to purchase the structure.
propublica.org/article/erodin…
propublica.org/article/erodin…
7/ Even though Fisher’s company secured lucrative federal contracts after building this controversial wall, Trump now claims it was “only done to make me look bad, and perhsps it now doesn’t even work. Should have been built like rest of Wall, 500 plus miles.”
8/ We’re not done reporting on this story. To stay updated on all our top investigations, sign up for the Big Story newsletter 👇
go.propublica.org/bigstory-social
go.propublica.org/bigstory-social
