Attorneys for former Olympian ask federal watchdog to review Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool case
by Mary McCue Bell · The Washington TimesAttorneys for David Hearn, the former Olympian accused by President Trump of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, have asked federal watchdogs to review the case.
In a Tuesday letter to Justice Department Inspector General Don Berthiaume and Interior Department Inspector General Caryl Brzymialkiewicz, the attorneys said the two officials must investigate “what happened inside their agencies that led to the shocking and indefensible treatment of Mr. Hearn.”
A judge dismissed vandalism charges against Mr. Hearn last week after he was accused of damaging the renovated pool. The ruling bars prosecutors from refiling charges against him.
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Mr. Hearn was charged with felony destruction of property after U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro contested that he ripped a piece of sealant at the bottom of the pool.
The president insisted that vandals cut the pool’s lining after its roughly $16 million renovation this past spring.
She eventually dropped the case — provoking Mr. Trump’s ire to say she “folded like an umbrella” — due to evidence that refuted prosecutors’ argument that vandals were to blame.
Government lawyers eventually contended that the damage was the “result of flawed installation by the contractor.”
The renovation, to beautify the pool and fix its internal issues, faced a July 4 deadline.
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The “rushed” and “botched” installation, cited by the government’s filing, led to liner peeling. Detached pieces were floating on the pool’s surface, and Mr. Hearn said he reached out to touch one of those fragments before he was arrested.
“The sprint to charge Mr. Hearn mirrored the rushed renovation itself, which the President had publicly committed to completing by a fixed deadline,” Mr. Hearn’s attorneys wrote.
They said the D.C. attorney’s office “admitted that it brought the case to the grand jury before it had the full investigative file and sought a felony indictment when it had only ‘barebones police reports’” and “the DOI’s representations that [Mr. Hearn] caused more than $1,000 of damage.”
Mr. Hearn’s attorneys added, “At a minimum, by their own admission, the prosecutors knew that the record was incomplete and apparently knew that DOI possessed exculpatory material, yet proceeded to the grand jury anyway. However, the record reflects that the USAO-DC in fact was in possession of the necessary exculpatory evidence and simply ignored it.”
They argue that prosecutors had written documentation that Mr. Hearn did not cause $1,000 damage to the pool.
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“Nevertheless, they sought and obtained an indictment the very next day,” the letter reads. “There was no legal or factual reason for seeking the indictment less than two weeks after the arrest.”
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