President Trump publicly dressed down his own hand-picked U.S. Attorney for Washington after her office dismissed a felony vandalism charge against a former Olympian, a case now shown to rest on faulty evidence from the Interior Department.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday that he was "really disappointed" in Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox News host he appointed as the District of Columbia's top federal prosecutor in May 2025. Pirro's office had filed a court motion the previous Friday dropping a single felony count of property destruction against David Hearn, a former U.S. Olympic canoeist accused of damaging the $16 million Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation, one of Trump's signature beautification projects ahead of America's 250th anniversary.
The dismissal came after prosecutors discovered that the Interior Department had withheld records showing the pool's damage was caused by a contractor's botched installation, not by vandalism. Trump was not persuaded that the new evidence justified letting the case go.
The president's frustration was blunt and personal. Speaking to reporters Monday, Trump did not mince words:
"I was disappointed with Jeanine Pirro, really disappointed with Jeanine Pirro. She folded like an umbrella, and people get away with things, and it's a disgrace."
He added: "Frankly, I think she choked." And when pressed further, Trump said, "I don't know what the h*** happened."
When MS Now reporter Jake Traylor asked whether the president was reconsidering Pirro's role, Trump shut the question down. "You're fake news. Don't ever talk again," he said. "One of the worst in the business."
Pirro was spotted entering the West Wing on Monday evening, presumably to meet with the president. Whether Trump has taken any formal steps toward removing her remained unclear.
The case against Hearn began in June 2026, when portions of the Reflecting Pool's newly applied liner started peeling away from the bottom and floating toward the surface. The spectacle drew public mockery of Trump's renovation project. Hearn was spotted reaching into the water to examine a piece of detached liner. U.S. Park Police arrested him.
A grand jury subsequently indicted Hearn on a single felony count of property destruction. He pleaded not guilty.
But the prosecution's foundation collapsed when Pirro's office finally obtained records the Interior Department had failed to turn over. The department had initially provided what the New York Post described as "barebones" reports and told prosecutors that "nearly all of the damage" was due to vandalism. Only after the indictment was handed up did Interior produce 695 megabytes of additional documents revealing a very different story.
Those records showed that Virginia-based Atlantic Industrial Coatings, the contractor behind the pool's $14 million installation, had performed a rushed, flawed job. The liner began peeling "almost immediately" after application, the result of overspraying and a failure of coatings to bond properly. A National Park Service engineer had flagged peeling concerns in an email on June 11, eight days before Hearn's arrest, warning of a vulnerable one-to-two-foot strip along the pool's perimeter.
The court filing from Pirro's office was direct:
"Given all of this newly discovered information, it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt."
Engineering reports cited in the filing found damage throughout the pool, including in the middle, areas inaccessible to any vandal. Breitbart reported that the widespread delamination was attributed to contractor "overspray" during the rushed installation ahead of the July Fourth America 250 celebrations.
The dismissal filing went further than simply citing insufficient evidence. Fox News reported that Pirro's office acknowledged the Interior Department had withheld key evidence and stated plainly: "Had DOI been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment."
That admission placed the blame squarely on the Interior Department's failure to share what it knew. But it also raised uncomfortable questions about the original decision to pursue a felony charge against a man who, by all available evidence, had done nothing more than touch a piece of liner that was already falling apart on its own.
Hearn had maintained his innocence from the start. In an earlier interview with the Daily Mail, he called the accusation "a completely unfounded accusation" and "a lie."
"I didn't rip, tear, destruct, destroy, or harm in any way, any part of the reflecting pool."
His attorneys, Norm Eisen, Mary Dohrmann, and Steve Levin, were less restrained. They called the prosecution "an abuse of government power" and demanded an apology.
"The Trump administration's case against Davey Hearn should never have been brought. Its dismissal today does not erase the abuse of government power in arresting and charging a patriotic American who did nothing wrong. The government's approach was ready, fire, aim."
Just The News reported that Hearn was one of seven people charged in connection with damage to the Reflecting Pool. He faced the only felony count among the group. A fellow defendant, Justin Carreno, also had charges dropped, according to Breitbart.
The dismissal still requires a judge's approval. A trial date of September 28 remains on the calendar if the court declines to grant the motion.
At an earlier news conference before the new evidence surfaced, Pirro herself had defended the prosecution, noting that "a parks employee actually told Hearn to stop, to stop his behavior and stop what he was doing." That statement now sits awkwardly beside her own office's admission that the underlying damage was caused by a contractor, not a vandal.
The Reflecting Pool renovation was part of Trump's broader effort to beautify Washington ahead of the nation's 250th birthday. The project cost $16 million. When the liner began peeling just weeks after completion, it became a political embarrassment.
The Interior Department's initial response, blaming vandalism and pushing for criminal charges, now looks like an attempt to deflect from a failed installation. The contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, rushed to finish the job before the Independence Day deadline, and the results spoke for themselves: coatings that would not bond, liner that peeled almost immediately, and damage spread across the entire pool.
Instead of acknowledging the contractor's failure, Interior pointed prosecutors at the people standing near the pool. A former Olympian who reached into the water to look at a piece of floating liner got a felony indictment for his trouble.
Trump's anger at Pirro is understandable on its own terms, he wanted accountability for damage to a project he championed, and the dismissal felt like a retreat. But the evidence trail suggests the real failure belonged to the Interior Department, which misled prosecutors about the cause of the damage and withheld records that would have prevented the indictment entirely.
Whether Pirro keeps her job remains an open question. What is not in question is that a man was arrested, indicted on a felony, and forced to defend himself in federal court because a government agency chose to cover for a contractor's shoddy work rather than tell the truth. That is the kind of institutional failure that should concern every taxpayer, regardless of who appointed the prosecutor.
