President Trump publicly rebuked his own U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro, after she moved to dismiss a felony vandalism charge against former Olympian David Hearn, a case the government now admits never should have been brought.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday that Pirro "choked" under pressure from a judge and abandoned a prosecution he still believes was justified. Pirro's office, meanwhile, pointed the finger at the Department of Interior for withholding documents that showed the real culprit behind damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool: a contractor that botched a rushed renovation job ahead of Independence Day.
The result is a collision between a president who wanted accountability for damage to a national landmark and a prosecutor whose own filings concede the evidence no longer supports the charge. Caught in the middle was Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist who spent weeks facing a federal felony for tugging at pool sealant that was already falling apart.
Pirro's office submitted the motion to dismiss on Friday, just over a month after Hearn was charged on June 19 with "forcefully and violently pulling up and removing the bottom liner" of the Reflecting Pool with both hands. Hearn had pleaded not guilty and maintained he left the pool in the same condition he found it.
The filing told a different story than the one prosecutors originally brought to a grand jury. A July 31 court filing acknowledged that Hearn did tug at the sealant at the bottom of the pool and was told to stop by authorities. But it went on to blame the contractor, identified by the Washington Examiner as Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a Virginia-based firm, for the widespread damage.
The pool's lining had begun peeling "almost immediately" after the renovation work was completed, the filing stated. The cause: overspraying and a failure of the coatings to bond, problems tied to a rushed job to finish before Independence Day festivities. A visual inspection found damage throughout the pool, including in the middle, areas where no vandal would plausibly have tried to peel the lining.
Pirro's office put the blame squarely on the Interior Department, led by Secretary Doug Burgum. Fox News reported that prosecutors described the department's initial reports as "barebones" and said Interior failed to disclose records showing the coating damage was caused by the flawed installation. Prosecutors stated plainly in the filing:
"Had DOI been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment."
Pirro herself, in the motion, acknowledged the weakness of the government's position. As AP News reported, the filing stated:
"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."
A National Park Service official had testified that the pool was already damaged before Hearn allegedly touched it, leaking over one million gallons of water per week with a pre-existing rip in the liner. A separate NPS engineer's email from June 11 confirmed the peeling was due to contractor error, Breitbart reported, and would not affect the liner's structural integrity.
Trump did not accept Pirro's reasoning. Speaking to reporters from the Oval Office on Monday, the president made clear he viewed the dismissal as a failure of nerve, not a correction of an error.
He told reporters:
"The judge was extremely unfriendly to Jeanine and frankly, I think she choked."
He went further, describing the judge, whose name has not been publicly reported, as hostile not to the defendant but to the prosecution itself.
"The judge was really vicious. Instead of going after the people that did it, the judge went after her and went after her department, and I guess she choked."
Trump said he remained convinced that vandalism occurred at the Reflecting Pool, even while acknowledging the contractor bore some responsibility for the pool's condition. He said he had personally visited the site to supervise renovations.
"I was 100% thrilled with the contractor, but the contractor was rushing. We wanted to get it open for July 4th, and we got it done. But in addition, there was vandalism."
His sharpest line landed without qualification.
"I was disappointed in Jeanine Pirro. Really disappointed in Jeanine Pirro."
And then: "She folded like an umbrella."
Trump also said the broader principle mattered. "People get away with things, and it's a disgrace," he told reporters. He did not answer when asked whether he was reconsidering Pirro's role as U.S. Attorney. CNN reported that Trump is considering removing her from the position, though no formal action has been announced.
Hearn's legal team, attorneys Norm Eisen, Mary Dohrmann, and Steve Levin, issued a statement that went well beyond relief at the dismissal. They called the prosecution an abuse of government power and demanded the administration apologize.
"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. The administration owes Mr. Hearn an apology."
The statement frames Hearn as a man wrongly caught up in a prosecution built on incomplete information, a former Olympic canoeist who ended up facing a federal felony because the Interior Department did not hand over the documents that would have stopped the case before it started.
Pirro's office did not respond to the New York Post's request for comment.
The contractor at the center of the fiasco, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, received a no-bid contract for the Reflecting Pool renovations. The work was rushed to finish before the America 250 Independence Day celebrations. The result was a coating job that failed almost immediately, overspraying, poor bonding, and delamination across the entire pool surface, including areas no person could have reached to vandalize.
That timeline matters. The government charged Hearn with deliberately destroying the pool liner. But its own filings now show the liner was already compromised by shoddy workmanship before Hearn ever touched it. A parks employee told Hearn to stop tugging at the sealant, and he did. Pirro herself acknowledged as much at an earlier news conference, saying, "A parks employee actually told Hearn to stop, to stop his behavior and stop what he was doing."
The gap between the original charge and the evidence that emerged afterward raises a straightforward question: Why did the Interior Department sit on documents that would have prevented a federal indictment? Pirro's motion says the department "provided less than fulsome information at the outset of this case." That is a polite way of saying the agency let prosecutors build a case on a foundation it knew was cracked.
Trump's frustration with Pirro is understandable on its own terms, he wanted the Reflecting Pool protected, and he wanted someone held responsible for the damage. But the court filings his own administration produced tell a story that points away from Hearn and toward a no-bid contractor and an Interior Department that failed to share what it knew. Pirro read those filings and concluded the case could not survive. Trump read her decision and concluded she lacked the spine to fight.
Both things can carry weight. But a prosecution built on withheld evidence is not a case worth winning, it is a case worth dropping before it becomes something worse.
When the government charges a man with a felony, it owes him more than a shrug when the facts fall apart. And when a no-bid contractor botches a national landmark, the public deserves to know who signed that contract, not just who tugged at the mess it left behind.
