A Washington, D.C., judge on Thursday permanently dismissed the criminal charge against U.S. Olympic canoeist David Hearn, ending a months-long saga surrounding allegations of vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial’s reflecting pool after the government admitted to “botched” construction work in recent renovations. In August, federal prosecutors asked Superior Court Judge Todd Edelman to dismiss the criminal charge against Hearn, who had been charged with felony destruction of government property. He was accused of causing more than $1,000 in damage to sealant that was installed last summer at the bottom of Reflecting Pool. Hearn pleaded not guilty to the charges and said he had stopped by the pool in July while on a 64-mile bike ride through the nation’s capital. He said he was arrested after he put his hand in the pool and was detained for five hours. The project to renovate the pool has been championed by President Trump, who in April launched an effort to address the pool’s “dire” state, as part of a series of spring cleaning projects in Washington, D.C., ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday. He had the pool’s stone floor coated with a sealant he called the “latest and greatest coating” and an “industrial grade” variation of pool coating. He told reporters that he personally chose the color of the sealant: “American flag blue.” The U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. admitted in court papers that Hearn had not, in fact, damaged the pool, although U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro alleged at a news conference in July that he had. Prosecutors said new information had come to light revealing that rips and tears in the pool liner were caused by a contractor’s “botched installation.” Edelman dismissed the case shortly after the government’s motion, but had not ruled on whether the case would be dismissed with prejudice, meaning the case could not be refiled, or without prejudice, meaning the charges could be reactivated. Hearn’s lawyers said the charges should be dismissed without prejudice, while Pirro’s office argued for a dismissal without prejudice. Hearn’s case, Edelman wrote, “presents a markedly different scenario” than the typical dismissal of criminal cases in federal court, because “within a month, the government acknowledged that his prosecution lacked merit.” “It reached this conclusion not because it misidentified Mr. Hearn as the perpetrator of the alleged act, but because no crime had occurred,” Edelman wrote, adding that the government’s interest in maintaining the possibility of charging Hearn again would result in a “meritless and politically motivated prosecution.” decision. “I was disappointed in Jeanine Pirro,” Trump told reporters in August. The president has frequently insisted that the slide was caused by vandals, not problems with the more than $10 million project. “Who would do such a thing?” the president wrote in a Truth Social post on June 20 that also mentioned several arrests. Many of the others accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool also had charges against them dropped. Pirro later made an attempt to prove to Trump that the damage to the Reflecting Pool was caused by poor construction work, taking a box full of evidence to the White House that sources said contained all the evidence collected by the Interior Department that exonerated Hearn and several others of criminal vandalism. The New York Times reported in September that the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, admitted in government documents that workers had not used enough primer and that the pool coating that was applied contained two chemicals that were incompatible. Days after Pirro’s office decided to dismiss the case, CBS News reported that White House officials asked the Justice Department to weigh whether it would be possible to launch a new criminal case against Hearn. In a statement, Norm Eisen, Hearn’s attorney, said Edelman’s ruling is “a victory for the rule of law and for an innocent American seeking justice.” “This case should never have been brought in the first place,” Eisen said, adding that the indictment was a “miscarriage of justice” and an “outrage that should shock all Americans.” A spokesperson for Pirro’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Edelman’s decision. More from CBS News Go deeper with The Free Press
