Prosecutors Drop the Reflecting Pool Vandalism Case, Admitting the Damage Was a Botched Installation

Federal prosecutors moved to dismiss the indictment against the man they accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, conceding in a July 31 filing that the damage they charged him with causing was the result of a botched installation by the contractor.

David Hearn, a 67-year-old former United States Olympic canoeist from Bethesda, Maryland, was charged with felony destruction of government property after the pool's newly applied sealant began peeling. Prosecutors had alleged he caused more than $1,000 in damage by "forcefully and violently pulling up and removing the bottom liner with both hands." Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, unveiled the indictment accusing Hearn of damaging "a national treasure."

Hearn denied it from the start. He told The Associated Press he was "a curious citizen" who touched a piece of liner that was already detached and let go as soon as a worker told him to.

The government's own filing now supports a version much closer to his. Prosecutors wrote that the peeling stemmed from "flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, and the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration" around Independence Day. Internal documents showed the problems surfaced while the sealant was still being sprayed, concentrated around the expansion joints in the pool's concrete bed — the same joints where the peeling cited in Hearn's indictment occurred.

The renovation is a project Trump personally championed, at a cost of more than $10 million. When the sealant began coming apart in June, he attributed it to vandals rather than to the work itself, posting on Truth Social on June 20 — "Who would do such a thing?" — while listing arrests. The filtration system for the project was supplied by Green Water Solutions, a company owned by a Trump donor.

Hearn's attorneys — Norm Eisen, Mary Dohrmann and Steve Levin — said in a statement that "the Trump administration's case against Davey Hearn should have never been brought," described the prosecution as "ready, fire, aim" governance, and said the government "owes Mr. Hearn an apology."

The dismissal closes a case that ran for roughly six weeks from public accusation to federal indictment to withdrawal, and it leaves the underlying question of the failed sealant where the prosecutors' own filing put it: with the contractor and the deadline, not with the man who stopped to look at the pool.