Pirro drops felony charge against Olympic canoeist after Interior Department withheld evidence of botched pool renovation

DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro moved to dismiss the vandalism case against former Olympian David Hearn after discovering the Reflecting Pool damage came from a contractor's flawed work, not from Hearn.

Pirro's office filed the dismissal motion on July 31, accusing the Department of Interior of withholding hundreds of megabytes of documents that showed a Virginia-based contractor, not Hearn, caused the peeling and damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool's surface. The filing landed barely a month after a grand jury indicted Hearn on a felony count of destruction of property, a charge that now appears to have rested on incomplete information the government itself fed to prosecutors.

The court filing puts the blame squarely on Interior. Pirro's office wrote that the department initially told prosecutors "nearly all of the damage to the Reflecting Pool was due to vandalism." Only after the indictment did Interior hand over records showing the real cause: a rushed, poorly executed coating job by Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a company that landed a no-bid contract worth more than $14 million to resurface the pool's 68,000-square-foot bottom.

A $14 million no-bid job started peeling two days after it was finished

Atlantic Industrial Coatings began work in early May, spraying Rhino 406 and Pipeliner 5000 coatings across the pool surface for most of the month. The job wrapped June 9. Two days later, a National Park Service engineer flagged a problem: the lining was already peeling.

That engineer sent an email on June 11 raising a specific warning. As the New York Post reported, the email read:

"I stated my concern that this 'overspray' along the perimeter of the pool could lead to a 1′-2′ strip that is vulnerable to peeling. The contractor would not confirm in field if this was or wasn't a risk."

Eight days after that warning, on June 19, Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist, walked up to the pool, noticed an upturned edge of the lining, and tugged at it. National Park Service employees observed what they described as Hearn "violently" pulling at the sealant. They told him to stop. US Park Police arrested him and handcuffed him next to his bicycle. Video of the arrest circulated on X shortly afterward.

Hearn remarked at the scene that NPS employees were "awfully sensitive about the pool." He called the peeled-back lining "really funny." The Interior Department assessed the damage from his tugging at $1,000.

For that, he was charged with a felony.

Prosecutors say Interior stonewalled them 'dozens and dozens of times'

Pirro's office convened a grand jury on July 2, thirteen days after Hearn's arrest. The jury returned the indictment. Hearn pleaded not guilty earlier this month. But the filing makes clear that prosecutors were working with almost nothing when they brought the case forward, and that Interior made sure it stayed that way.

The motion states that the US Attorney's office initially relied on "barebones police reports" from Park Police. Body-worn camera footage trickled in for "roughly 10 individuals." The real picture did not emerge until mid-July, when Interior finally turned over 695 megabytes of additional documents about the installation process, only after prosecutors pressed the department repeatedly.

The filing's language is blunt. Pirro's office wrote that Interior's conduct "undermined the government's ability to abide by these responsibilities." The motion continued:

"It was not until USAO-DC repeatedly reached out to DOI dozens and dozens of times that DOI slowly started trickling information to USAO-DC."

Those documents told a different story than the one Interior had originally presented. The damage was not vandalism. It was the result of a botched coating job by a contractor that had been rushing to finish before Independence Day and the America 250 celebration. The coatings failed to bond to the pool surface. Overspraying created strips vulnerable to peeling, exactly what the NPS engineer had warned about on June 11, more than a week before Hearn ever touched the pool.

The administration has faced friction on multiple fronts in recent weeks, from congressional challenges to executive spending decisions to the fallout from this case. The Reflecting Pool debacle stands out because the problem came from inside the government's own house.

Pirro visited the pool herself, then the case fell apart

Pirro personally visited the Reflecting Pool site on July 1, the day before her office convened the grand jury. The filing does not say what she observed. But within weeks of that visit, the documents Interior had withheld began surfacing, and the felony charge became unsustainable.

The motion's conclusion 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."

President Trump had previously claimed that others also received citations and that six people were arrested in connection with damage to the pool in June. He described the damage as including a "350 foot gash, made by a very sharp knife or razors." The dismissal motion does not address those other cases or that description. It deals only with Hearn.

Hearn's attorneys, Norm Eisen, Mary Dohrmann, and Steve Levin, issued a statement that did not hold back. They said Pirro's office had taken a "ready, fire, aim" approach and called for 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."

That framing, casting Hearn as a victim of government overreach, will resonate with some and grate on others. But the court filing itself supports a narrower, harder-to-dispute conclusion: Interior told prosecutors the damage was vandalism, withheld evidence that it was not, and a man faced a felony charge on that basis.

Interior's silence raises questions no one has answered yet

The Department of Interior did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the filing's allegations. Several questions remain open. What specific authority allowed the department to award a no-bid contract worth more than $14 million to Atlantic Industrial Coatings? Why did Interior represent the damage as vandalism when its own engineer had flagged installation problems eight days before Hearn's arrest? And who, if anyone, will be held accountable for withholding that information from prosecutors?

The broader pattern matters. When a federal agency feeds incomplete information to prosecutors, and then stonewalls them for weeks, the result is not just one wrongful charge. It is an erosion of the credibility that federal law enforcement depends on. Pirro's willingness to file the dismissal and name the Interior Department's conduct in the motion is a corrective step, but it came after a grand jury indictment, an arrest, and a not-guilty plea that never should have been necessary.

Tensions between the White House and various agencies have surfaced repeatedly this year, whether over stalled legislative priorities on Capitol Hill or internal disputes about how the administration communicates its decisions. The Reflecting Pool case adds a new dimension: a federal department apparently misleading its own prosecutors.

The no-bid contract itself deserves scrutiny. Atlantic Industrial Coatings received more than $14 million to coat 68,000 square feet of pool surface. The coating started peeling two days after the work was done. An NPS engineer raised the alarm. The contractor refused to confirm whether the overspray posed a risk. And when the surface failed, Interior's first instinct was to blame the public, including a former Olympian who pulled at a loose edge.

That sequence, a rushed job, a known defect, a misrepresentation to prosecutors, and a felony charge against a bystander, is not a story about one man tugging at pool lining. It is a story about what happens when a bureaucracy covers for its own failures and lets someone else take the fall. The fact that it was a Trump-appointed US Attorney who called it out does not make it less damning for the agency that caused it.

When a $14 million government contractor can botch a job, and the agency that hired them responds by charging a citizen with a felony, the system is not protecting public property, it is protecting itself.