A D.C. judge on Thursday granted prosecutors’ request to dismiss a felony charge against the former Olympian who had been accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a case that drew national scrutiny and inflamed tensions within the Trump administration.
David Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist, was arrested in June after he said he touched a piece of plastic liner that had begun visibly peeling from the Reflecting Pool, becoming a target of President Donald Trump, who railed against Hearn and other alleged vandals for damaging the newly refurbished landmark.
Outside observers and a Washington Post analysis repeatedly showed that the damage likely stemmed from a rushed renovation. The Justice Department ultimately moved to drop the case against Hearn, along with three other defendants accused of damaging the Reflecting Pool, after receiving Interior Department documents suggesting the peeling was caused by the “botched” repair job.
Hours after the judge’s order, Hearn said he was relieved to see his case dismissed but that the ordeal has taken a toll.
“I don’t think anyone likes people targeted or accused for things they didn’t do,” Hearn said on CNN’s “The Source with Kaitlan Collins.” “It’s painful to be talked about like I’m some kind of scum, or not a very nice person. For that to be coming from a place of untruth … leaders don’t do that.”
Hearn said his case shows that “this could happen to anybody.”
“Nobody is immune to this kind of government lawlessness,” he added.
Hearn’s lawyers this week filed a motion asking the court to dismiss Hearn’s case with prejudice, which would prevent the government from reviving charges against their client.
“Given the positions of the parties, the Court discerns no reason why this felony case should remain pending against Mr. Hearn while the parties litigate, and the Court resolves, the remaining legal issues,” D.C. Superior Court Judge Todd E. Edelman wrote in the order. Edelman said he would rule on that issue at a later date, according to the order.
The White House and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In April, Trump unveiled plans to resurface the century-old Reflecting Pool on the National Mall. But the newly minted changes to the pool’s basin soon began showing signs of deterioration, with chunks of “American Flag Blue” liner drifting to the surface and algae blooms clouding the water. Trump blamed vandals for causing the damage, accusing Hearn and others of slicing off portions of the pool but offering no evidence.
“It was slashed with a knife, or box cutter, high grade colored waterproofing liner — it was VANDALISM!” Trump wrote in a July social media post.
Hearn, 67, has said he was passing by the Reflecting Pool in June and had only touched a piece of floating pool liner before he was arrested by U.S. Park Police. Initially charged with a misdemeanor, a grand jury last month indicted Hearn on a felony count of malicious destruction of property, with U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro alleging that he had “forcefully and violently” ripped liner from the basin.
“That was a little bit of a shock,” Hearn said Thursday on CNN. “The things she was saying were so outrageous that I had to think, ‘What did I do to get her to say these things about me?’”
The legal battle touched off a furor, as Trump and his supporters lambasted Hearn in the media for the alleged crime, while critics said Hearn was a “scapegoat” for the administration and condemned the case as an abuse of power.
The legal battle came to an unexpected end late last week, when the Justice Department reversed course and asked the judge to dismiss the case. In a filing, prosecutors walked back their vandalism claims, writing that new information received from the Interior Department showed that the peeling liner was the result of faulty installation by the contractor and “not vandalism as initially represented.”
“Had [the Interior Department] been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment,” according to the filing.
Pirro’s office also moved to drop misdemeanor charges against three other people accused of damaging the pool.
In the days since, Trump has continued to blame vandals for the damage and said Pirro “folded like an umbrella” for abandoning the case.
Attorneys for the defendants have cast doubt on the Justice Department’s version of events, alleging that prosecutors knew about the faulty installation from the beginning but pursued vandalism charges anyway.
Prosecutors’ “current effort to assign sole fault to DOI therefore confirms, rather than excuses, the government’s bad faith,” Hearn’s lawyers wrote in a filing this week. “It relied on DOI to obtain the indictment, failed to investigate before charging, and now seeks to disclaim responsibility for information held by the very agencies on whose accusations and witnesses it relied.”
The attorneys allege that prosecutors had access to documents showing that the pool lining was failing before Hearn’s arrest. They also allege that a key government witness testified to a grand jury that repairs would have been necessary regardless of Hearn’s actions, but that prosecutors later recalled the witness and “elicited” them to say that damage “attributable to Mr. Hearn” would be more than $1,000, according to the filing.
Hearn’s attorneys are also asking the judge that they be allowed to review grand jury records related to the case to see whether prosecutors potentially misled jurors to secure an indictment, according to the filing.
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