The Justice Department dismissed its felony vandalism case against a 67-year-old former Olympic canoeist, blaming a contractor's flawed installation for damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, but President Trump says the real culprits are vandals.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro's office filed to dismiss the case against David Hearn on Friday, issuing a blistering court filing that turned the blame away from the defendant and toward two federal entities: the Department of the Interior, which prosecutors say withheld key documents, and Atlantic Industrial Coatings, the contractor whose work Pirro's office now calls a botched installation. By Saturday, Trump had taken to Truth Social to publicly reject the decision made by his own appointee.
The dispute lays bare an unusual rift inside the Trump administration. A president who ordered a $14-million-plus renovation of the Reflecting Pool ahead of America's 250th birthday celebration is now at odds with the federal prosecutor he installed, over whether the pool's damage came from criminal sabotage or shoddy workmanship.
The DOJ's dismissal filing, first detailed by The Sun, made several damaging admissions. Prosecutors wrote that the damage to the Reflecting Pool "was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism." They added that it is "difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt."
The filing went further, accusing the Department of the Interior of providing "less than fulsome information at the outset of this case." Prosecutors said they did not have documents showing the contractor's failed work when the case first went before a grand jury. Those Interior Department records only arrived after Hearn had already been indicted.
Had prosecutors received the right information from Interior beforehand, the filing stated, the government "would not have sought a grand jury indictment."
That is a remarkable concession. A federal grand jury indicted a man, and the Justice Department now says it happened because another federal agency kept relevant evidence out of prosecutors' hands.
Atlantic Industrial Coatings, the contractor identified in the filing, reportedly received a no-bid contract for the renovation job and had no prior history of federal contracting work. A post-indictment inspection found damage spread throughout the pool, including in the center, a pattern more consistent with a system-wide installation failure than targeted vandalism by individuals at the pool's edge.
The Trump administration has been aggressive in reshaping its roster of federal prosecutors, but this episode raises a different kind of question: whether the agencies feeding information to those prosecutors are doing their jobs honestly.
David Hearn, a 67-year-old former U.S. Olympic canoeist, was riding his bike on June 19 when he stopped at the Reflecting Pool. He touched a piece of coating he said was already detached from the surface. For that, he was charged with felony destruction of property and indicted by a grand jury. He pleaded not guilty.
His attorney, Steve Levin, did not hold back after the dismissal. Levin said, per NBC News:
"The Government's case against Davey Hearn should never have been brought. Its dismissal today does not erase the abuse of government power in arresting and charging a patriotic American. The government's approach was ready, shoot, aim."
Levin added that "the federal government owes Mr. Hearn an apology."
At least two other people charged in connection with alleged vandalism at the Reflecting Pool also had their cases dropped, according to court records. The broader prosecution effort appears to have collapsed alongside the Hearn case once the contractor evidence came to light.
The episode echoes a pattern that has surfaced in other DOJ investigative matters, cases built on incomplete or misleading information from cooperating agencies, with defendants left to absorb the consequences.
On Saturday, Trump posted on Truth Social, making clear he was not on board with his own U.S. Attorney's conclusion:
"I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool. I don't know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM, that included the grass, which had a big 86 47 emblazoned in giant letters on it, and other elements of the surrounding area. There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!"
Trump also posted a nearly four-minute video he claimed showed vandalism at the site. He has previously asserted that vandals slashed the pool's lining with a knife or box cutter and introduced fertilizer to spur algae growth. The pool has experienced peeling coating, algae blooms, and green-tinted water since the renovation.
The public split between a sitting president and his own appointed U.S. Attorney is unusual. Trump openly rejected Pirro's decision, a move that puts the prosecutor in an awkward position, she followed the evidence her office uncovered, and her boss told the country she got it wrong.
Trump ordered the Reflecting Pool renovation in May, ahead of the nation's 250th birthday celebration around July 4. The project cost more than $14 million. That an inexperienced contractor received a no-bid deal for such a high-profile job, and then delivered work so poor it triggered a criminal investigation pointed in the wrong direction, deserves its own accounting.
The most troubling thread in this story is not the disagreement between Trump and Pirro. It is the Department of the Interior's conduct. Pirro's filing says Interior withheld documents that would have prevented a grand jury indictment. A 67-year-old man faced a felony charge because one federal agency did not give another federal agency the information it needed.
Whether Interior's failure was bureaucratic incompetence or something more deliberate, the filing does not say. But the result is the same: a citizen was dragged through the federal criminal justice system on a charge the government now admits it should never have brought. The ongoing confirmation process for the next Attorney General should include hard questions about how agencies share, or withhold, evidence from prosecutors.
Meanwhile, the contractor who botched the job has not publicly responded to the DOJ's characterization. Interior has not addressed the accusation that it kept prosecutors in the dark. And the Reflecting Pool, a national monument that was supposed to gleam for America's birthday, still has problems with peeling coating and green water.
Trump may be right that vandals contributed to some of the damage. The "86 47" markings on the grass and other elements he cited point to deliberate acts by someone. But Pirro's office followed the evidence trail that Interior finally handed over, and that trail led to a contractor, not a canoeist on a bike ride.
The real failure here is not a disagreement over who damaged a pool. It is a federal government that charged a man with a felony based on incomplete evidence, let an unqualified contractor walk away from a $14-million job, and still cannot explain why one agency kept another in the dark.
When the government moves that fast to punish and that slow to get its own story straight, the people paying the bills have every right to demand better.
