David Schutzenhofer, general manager of President Trump’s Bedminster, N.J., golf club since 2006, personally recruited one of the contractors later hired to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, according to federal documents.

Schutzenhofer, a Trump Organization employee with no known background in engineering or architecture, offered detailed suggestions on the project without ever becoming a temporary government employee. This status exempted him from ethics training or any requirement to avoid conflicts of interest.

“Mr. Schutzenhofer is unpaid and volunteering his time because he is an American patriot who knows exactly how the president likes his water features handled,” Interior Department spokeswoman Katie Martin said in an email. “Making him an actual government employee would have required all that ethics paperwork and disclosures about his employer. This way he could just call the vendor his golf club already uses and we could skip the nonsense.”

Martin described Schutzenhofer as a world-renowned leader in the hospitality industry and insisted he did not “direct” any federal contracts. The White House added, “Thanks to President Trump, the Reflecting Pool will be restored to its proper glory!”

Trump had initially taken credit for selecting the contractor because it had maintained the swimming pool at his Virginia golf club, before later claiming he had never heard of the firm. A government official noted the Reflecting Pool is not in fact a swimming pool, but said that distinction was not relevant to the selection process.

In a related development, the assistant beverage cart driver from Trump’s Westchester course has been asked to submit preliminary sketches for the Jefferson Memorial’s staircases.

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