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A former Olympic canoe racer pleaded not guilty on Thursday to deliberately damaging the recently renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a politically charged case that his defence attorneys and other Trump administration critics have derided as an abuse of prosecutorial power.
David Hearn, who competed in three Summer Olympics, entered the plea during his initial appearance in D.C. Superior Court. Hearn, 67, of Bethesda, Md., was indicted last Thursday on a single felony count of property destruction.
U.S. President Donald Trump ordered a multimillion-dollar renovation of the reflecting pool ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary this month, but the project has been plagued with problems.
Workers have used chemicals to curtail an algae bloom. Trump has said the pool likely would need to be drained again for liner repairs after chunks of blue coating were seen floating at the surface.
Trump has claimed without substantiation that vandals dumped fertilizer into the pool and slashed the coating with a box cutter. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, the top federal prosecutor for the District of Columbia, said last week that six other people were arrested on misdemeanor charges related to the $16 million US ($22.6 million Cdn) pool project.
Hearn’s attorneys have said the charges against him are based on a “concocted narrative” and “should be alarming to every American.”
“This indictment reflects the administration’s effort to shift blame for their own failures,” the lawyers said in a statement. “The justice system exists to determine facts, not to provide political cover.”
Hearn previously told The Associated Press that he was detained by National Guard troops and U.S. Park Police for five hours after stopping by the pool during a roughly 100-kilometre bike ride on June 19.
He said he reached in to examine newly peeled coating and briefly touched a chunk attached to the side of the pool, but obeyed a park worker who told him to let go of it.
Pirro accused Hearn of causing more than $1,000 US (about $1,400 Cdn) in damage by ripping up recently installed sealant from the pool and acting belligerently toward an employee who told him to stop.
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)