Reflecting Pool Vandalism: Cases Dismissed After Rush to Judgment

During a July 2 press briefing, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, claimed she possessed “tremendous evidence” that David Hearn had intentionally caused more than $1,000 in damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, rendering him guilty of a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. That assertion proved false, Pirro acknowledged last Friday when she withdrew the charges against Hearn, a 67-year-old former competitive canoeist.

Pirro’s awkward reversal, which drew the ire of President Donald Trump, could be read as evidence of her willingness to challenge her boss’s assertion that vandalism was to blame for damage to the pool’s newly installed liner, rather than the “rushed and botched installation” she described in her motion to dismiss the indictment against Hearn. But it also raises questions about Pirro’s decision to pursue charges against Hearn given what she knew at the time, suggesting she was intent on making an example of him despite existing reasons to doubt his guilt.

By the time Pirro secured the indictment, media reports had already indicated that portions of the pool’s blue liner, installed under an unusual no-bid arrangement with a company with no prior federal experience, were coming loose. The earliest coverage appeared on June 18, a day before Hearn’s arrest and about two weeks before his indictment.

According to Hearn’s account, he paused his bike ride and reached into the pool to touch a floating piece of liner simply out of curiosity about its feel. “I didn’t vandalize anything,” he told The Washington Post. “I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything.”

Interior Department personnel offered a different version. The initial U.S. Park Police report, cited by Pirro in her filing, stated that Hearn saw “a large piece of material flapping in the water and began to grab at it,” citing “a witness” who claimed Hearn “began to rip and pull at a chunk of liner material.”

Two National Park Service (NPS) employees said Hearn was yanking at the flap and “further damaging this compromised area.” In other words, all sides acknowledged that the liner was already loosening, and the only dispute concerned whether and to what extent Hearn had “maliciously” compounded the damage.

At the indictment day press conference, Pirro embraced the Interior Department’s account, saying NPS employees “observed Hearn actually forcefully and violently pulling up and removing the bottom liner with both hands.” Now she contends she was too quick to accept that narrative, blaming the Interior Department for concealing relevant information about recognized problems with the liner installation.

According to the material provided by the Interior Department, Pirro claims, “the damage was entirely caused by vandals.” Yet internal documents subsequently obtained by her office indicate the damage “was the result of flawed installation by the contractor.”

While those documents may have clarified the scope of the problem, it should not have surprised Pirro, since press reports (including pieces based on Interior Department records) had already discussed it weeks before she appeared at a podium and accused Hearn of a felony. But Pirro disregarded that alternate explanation, apparently because she was eager to punish “unchecked vandalism” of “our sacred monuments,” which she said was “a priority not only for the president, but for myself as well.”

That priority overshadowed the question of whether Hearn could be proven guilty of vandalism, which ought to have been the sole factor in deciding to charge him. “The government’s approach was ready, fire, aim,” Hearn’s lawyers said. A similar pattern seems to have emerged in three other cases against alleged reflecting-pool vandals, which Pirro’s office also dropped.

“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro,” Trump said on Saturday. “I guess she choked,” he added on Monday, describing himself as “really disappointed” in her because “she folded like an umbrella.” For the president, the matter of individual guilt or innocence remains irrelevant.