President Trump insisted Sunday evening that former Olympian David Hearn vandalized the recently renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool earlier this summer, days after castigating DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro for dropping the case against the ex-athlete.
“A National Park Service [NPS] career employee, a highly credible witness, saw David Hearn (ActBlue) in broad daylight vandalize the Reflecting Pool by ‘violently’ ripping and tugging at the Pool’s somewhat delicate coating,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, attaching a screenshot of a court document. “The National Park Service employee provided this witness testimony to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in early July.”
The president added that “[t]here was substantial other damage to the Reflecting Pool, also but, unfortunately, there is no video or proof, other than the damage, itself. We are working on the Pool, and it will reopen shortly.
“As with many jobs, there was also some contractor error done by rushing the job for a July 4th opening, but it was a very small area of this massive Pool, and was relatively inconsequential. Security cameras have been, and are being, installed.”
Hearn, 67, was charged with one felony count of destruction of property only for Pirro to dismiss the case July 31, claiming the Interior Department never shared information about the “flawed installation by the contractor.”
Trump, 80, criticized Pirro for abandoning the prosecution Aug. 3, telling reporters in the Oval Office: “The judge was extremely unfriendly to Jeanine and frankly, I think she choked. The judge was really vicious. Instead of going after the people that did it, the judge went after her and went after her department, and I guess she choked … She folded like an umbrella.”
Hearn, who represented the US in canoeing at the 1992, 1996, and 2000 Summer Games, was initially arrested June 19 and indicted July 2.
The document posted by Trump cited a NPS employee who claimed he and a colleague were cleaning the interior of the Reflecting Pool when Hearn approached them and started taking cell phone “video or a photograph(s) of the damage to the reflecting pool.”
The witness added that Hearn then knelt, “placed both hands into the reflecting pool — below the surface of the water — and started to ‘violently’ rip and tug at a large portion of the blue pool coating.”
The NPS worker added that when they told Hearn to stop, he responded that they were “awfully sensitive about the pool” and kept pulling at the coating until National Guard soldiers patrolling the area arrived.
Hearn had pleaded not guilty after claiming to the Washington Post following his arrest that he grabbed hold of a “flapping piece” of the sealant that “was still attached to the bottom” of the pool, but “didn’t destroy or break or peel anything.”
Video footage posted on X by journalist Emily Miller showed Hearn being cuffed by US Park Police next to his bicycle and describing the peeled-back lining as “really funny.”
“It is not a crime to touch the Reflecting Pool, to touch water in the United States of America,” Hearn’s defense lawyer Norm Eisen told reporters following Hearn’s first and only court appearance July 9.
More than $16 million in taxpayer money has been spent on renovations at the site after Trump vowed to make the historic location “as beautiful as it can be” for July 4 celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of America’s independence.
The Interior Department picked Atlantic Industrial Coatings to apply the sealant after the pool was first drained in April, and the Virginia-based company was picked again to fix the tears in the lining.
