Federal prosecutors have dropped all four Reflecting Pool vandalism cases after concluding that botched contractor work, not vandals, caused the damage to the Lincoln Memorial’s newly renovated pool.
The collapse started Friday, when the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia moved to dismiss the felony indictment against David Hearn, a three time US Olympic canoeist. Hearn was indicted in early July over a June 19 incident in which the government said he pulled at recently installed sealant at the pool. He faced up to 10 years in prison on a felony destruction of property charge, and his trial had been set for September 28. In the dismissal filing, the office said newly released evidence from the Department of the Interior made it difficult to attribute the widespread damage to vandalism, let alone prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, and pointed instead to a “botched installation” by the contractor.
NPR confirmed Monday, through defense lawyers and court filings, that prosecutors then dropped the cases against the three remaining defendants, all of whom faced misdemeanor charges rather than felonies. Those motions ran one page each and offered no reasoning at all. That leaves nobody facing charges in a case the administration had spent weeks describing as an attack on a national monument.
What the government now says happened comes down to construction failure. US Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s filing cited “over spraying and delamination.” Delamination is what happens when a coating separates from the surface it was applied to and starts lifting away in sheets instead of staying bonded. The work was part of a $14 million renovation, and the pool was drained a second time after the Fourth of July fireworks and repainted before the Reflecting Pool vandalism cases fell apart.
The defense lawyers had been saying this from the start. Attorney Benowitz told CBS News that he and other attorneys visited the pool to investigate and saw flawed seams and a liner that had bubbled up, and that there were no slashes anywhere. He said the government “literally fabricated a crime” and called the episode a plain example of the criminal justice system being used politically. His client walked away with a misdemeanor charge and lost his job over it, and is now weighing his legal options against the government. Hearn’s attorneys had separately argued that he was made a scapegoat for a troubled renovation Trump had repeatedly promoted, and NBC Washington reported that Hearn could sue the federal government.
Trump’s response was to attack his own prosecutor. Pirro is a former Fox News host whom he handpicked as the top federal prosecutor in the nation’s capital, and he told reporters in the Oval Office that she “folded like an umbrella.” He said she choked, and put the blame on DC Superior Court Judge Todd Edelman, saying the judge had been vicious toward her and her office rather than pursuing the people responsible. He had already written on Truth Social that he disagreed with her completely, and he continued to insist the damage was vandalism, pointing to the grass near the pool where he said 86 47 had been marked in giant letters. Asked whether he was reconsidering Pirro’s job, he told the reporter who raised it that they were fake news and should not speak again.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum backed him publicly, posting on X that the evidence is clear and vandals repeatedly damaged the pool, that some of the acts were caught on camera, and that Interior gave the US Attorney’s office expert testimony, eyewitness testimony and every piece of evidence it requested on the timeline it requested. He did not release specific evidence to support that. The grass marking Trump cited is a separate matter from the pool liner damage that the Reflecting Pool vandalism dismissals actually addressed, and no evidence has been made public tying the four defendants to it.
The Associated Press reported that Pirro was seen entering the White House on Monday evening, as was Burgum. Pirro has not made a public statement since Trump’s weekend post.
That leaves an uncomfortable sequence for her office. Prosecutors brought felony charges in one of the most visible public settings in Washington, held them for weeks while the administration built a political argument around them, and then conceded that the damage came from installation failures on a renovation the government paid for. Nobody has explained why the charges were filed before the Interior Department’s evidence about the contractor work was reviewed, or why the three misdemeanor defendants were charged at all if the same evidence applied to them. Hearn spent the summer facing a decade in prison. Another defendant lost his job. The contractor has not been publicly identified.
