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A former U.S. Olympian was indicted Thursday on a felony charge in what President Donald Trump has called vandalism of the reflecting pool.
David Hearn, a former Olympic canoe racer, was indicted on a single count of property destruction in Washington, D.C., court.
District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said Hearn ripped up recently installed sealant on the pool in “a deliberate act” that caused more than $1,000 US in damage. She accused him of “forcefully and violently” pulling up bottom liner “with both hands” and acting belligerent 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 misdemeanors arrests.
In a statement, Democracy Defenders Fund co-founder Norm Eisen and Mary Dohrmann, senior counsel at Washington Litigation Group, said they represented Hearn and that the charges were “outrageous and should be alarming to every American.” Eisen and Dohrmann construed the case as representative of “the misuse of government power against an ordinary citizen based on a concocted narrative.”
U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempt to repair and repaint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., is not going as planned. Andrew Chang breaks down the race to fix a slew of problems by Independence Day, from large swaths of peeling paint to swampy algae blooms.
(Photo credits: The Canadian Press, Reuters, Adobe Stock and Getty Images)
Hearn didn’t immediately return a phone call seeking comment. He previously told The Associated Press that he reached into the pool 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,” Hearn said in a telephone interview last month. “I reached down to see what it felt like. It was very rubbery.”
Hearn, 67, of Bethesda, Md., owned a company that made composite materials used to build watercraft. He said he stopped by the pool during a 102-kilometre bike ride.
Hearn said he was detained by National Guard troops and U.S. Park Police for five hours before being released.
Trump has said federal authorities made “multiple arrests” of people he said were vandalizing the reflecting pool as he struggled to explain why the $14-million-plus US rehabilitation project he launched for the nation’s 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 workers attempted to make repairs. Contractors and federal workers used chemicals and ozone nanobubbles to combat an algae bloom, and Trump has said that problems most likely require draining the pool again for liner repairs.