▶ Watch Video: Trump rebukes Jeanine Pirro for dropping Reflecting Pool charges
White House officials have asked the Justice Department to weigh whether it is possible to bring a new criminal case against David Hearn, the former Olympian who was accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool, after federal prosecutors moved to dismiss the indictment against him earlier this month, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.
Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, had charged Hearn with felony destruction of government property, accusing him of causing more than $1,000 in damage to the sealant that was recently installed at the bottom of the Reflecting Pool. The project to renovate the pool was championed by President Trump.
The discussions between the Justice Department and the White House were reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.
Earlier this month, however, federal prosecutors moved to dismiss the indictment without prejudice, meaning the case could be brought again, citing new information that the damage was caused by a “botched installation” by a contractor, not vandalism.
President Trump criticized the decision, writing on Truth Social that there “may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!”
“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool,” Mr. Trump wrote. “I don’t know what she was thinking?”
After a weekend of criticism from Mr. Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Pirro was spotted visiting the White House carrying a box full of evidence. Sources said the boxes contained all of the evidence collected from the Interior Department that exculpated Hearn and several others from criminal vandalism.
Alex WROBLEWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
Last week, a D.C. Superior Court judge formally dismissed the case, but punted on the question of whether or not to dismiss with or without prejudice, which could impact whether the current felony case could be revived. There is further briefing scheduled in the case for late this summer and early fall.
The conversation between the White House and the Criminal Division occurred last week, one source said, and the discussions were focused on whether there was a way to bring the case potentially as a misdemeanor, which would not require using a grand jury. The conversations were exploratory, and no decision was made, the source added.
After deciding to drop Hearn’s charges, prosecutors in Washington moved to drop charges against three other defendants who were charged with misdemeanors for allegedly damaging the pool. The three were accused of destroying property of value less than $1,000.
Michael Bromwich, an attorney representing Hearn, said in a statement to CBS News that it was “truly difficult to understand the enormous effort apparently being spent on reviving a case that was dead on arrival.”
“The case was dismissed because there was no evidence to support charging Mr. Hearn. That won’t change with more people spending more time to figure out a way to salvage it. At some point DOJ should simply cut its losses and pursue actual criminal activity rather than continue to harass Mr. Hearn,” Bromwich said.
In some administrations, the Justice Department has refrained from discussing criminal cases with the White House to preserve its prosecutorial independence. During the Biden administration, Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a memo to the department that the DOJ “will not advise the White House concerning pending or contemplated criminal or civil law enforcement investigations or cases unless doing so is important for the performance of the President’s duties and appropriate from a law enforcement perspective.”
U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche may take a different view of the DOJ’s role. During his confirmation hearing, Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware asked him, “Is the Department of Justice that you are running independent from the White House?” Blanche replied, “The Department of Justice, like every single department in the executive, is part of the executive.”