Trump said last month that federal authorities made “multiple arrests” of people he accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool.Nathan Howard/The Associated Press
A former Olympian was indicted Thursday on a felony charge in what President Donald Trump has called vandalism of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, where a renovation project he launched has been riddled with problems.
David Hearn, a former Olympic canoe racer, was indicted on a single count of property destruction in Washington court.
District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said Mr. Hearn ripped up recently installed sealant on the pool in “a deliberate act” that caused more than US$1,000 in damage. She accused him of “forcefully and violently” pulling up the bottom liner “with both hands” and acting belligerently toward an employee who told him to stop.
“This is a case with tremendous evidence,” she said, adding that authorities have made about six other misdemeanour arrests.
Former U.S. Olympic canoeist David Hearn has been indicted on a charge of felony destruction of property for allegedly vandalizing the newly renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, court records showed on Thursday.
Reuters
In a statement, Democracy Defenders Fund co-founder Norm Eisen and Mary Dohrmann, senior counsel at Washington Litigation Group, said that they represented Mr. Hearn and that the charges were “outrageous and should be alarming to every American.”
Mr. Eisen and Ms. Dohrmann construed the case as representative of “the misuse of government power against an ordinary citizen based on a concocted narrative.”
Mr. Hearn didn’t immediately return a phone call seeking comment. He previously told the Associated Press that he reached into the pool on June 19 to examine the newly peeled coating. He said he briefly touched a chunk that was still attached to the side of the pool, then let go shortly after a park worker told him to.
“I’m a curious citizen,” Mr. Hearn said in a telephone interview last month. “I reached down to see what it felt like. It was very rubbery.”
Mr. Hearn, 67, of Bethesda, Md., owned a company that made composite materials used to build watercraft.
Saying that he stopped by the pool during a 103-kilometre bike ride, Mr. Hearn said he was detained by National Guard troops and Park Police for five hours before being released.
Mr. Trump said last month that federal authorities made “multiple arrests” of people he accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool as he struggled to explain why the US$16-million rehabilitation project he launched for the United States’ 250th anniversary seemingly backfired. Without providing any substantiation, he also said vandals dumped fertilizer into the pool and slashed the coating with a box cutter.
In subsequent days, National Guard members and U.S. Park Police patrolled the deck around the Reflecting Pool as Mr. Trump’s administration faced a self-imposed deadline to fix a botched renovation before the anniversary celebrations. Contractors and federal workers used chemicals and ozone nanobubbles to combat an algae bloom, and Mr. Trump has said that problems most likely require draining the pool again for liner repairs.