More: Creative Polymers partnered with Rhino Linings, a California-based company that made large quantities of polyurea coating at its factory in Texas. Rhino was also attractive because it made a coating in a shade called "American flag blue," and the patriotically named hue delighted Mr. Trump.

In turn, a sales manager at Rhino called Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a Virginia-based company that had never won a government contract, and enlisted its help with applying the coating, according to a statement on the company's website.

Put more simply: documents and interviews establish how a first-time contractor was paid millions of dollars to apply a novel solution designed by a golf club manager to a national landmark.

"It's like asking the museum guard to restore a painting in the Met," said Charles Birnbaum, the president of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, a nonprofit that has sued unsuccessfully to stop the work.

Neither Rhino Linings nor Mr. Schutzenhofer answered questions about their roles in setting up the Reflecting Pool repairs or in choosing Atlantic for the application.

These mother effers sprayed bed liner in the pool?