Lawyers for former Olympian David Hearn, whom the Department of Justice wrongly accused this summer of damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, urged internal investigators at the Justice and Interior departments to probe what led to what they are calling an abuse of government power.
In a letter sent Tuesday morning, Hearn’s legal team said he suffered a “nightmare” after he was arrested on June 19 and indicted two weeks later for allegedly vandalizing the pool’s liner, despite both the Justice and Interior departments having information that showed the damage was due to a flawed installation of new coating, ordered by President Donald Trump, and not to Hearn.
The letter calls on Don R. Berthiaume, the DOJ’s inspector general, and Caryl Brzymialkiewicz, the Interior Department’s inspector general, to fulfill their mission to ensure ethical and competent government conduct.
“From June 19 to the present, gross incompetence, negligence, and misconduct have been committed by personnel in both agencies,” the lawyers’ letter said. “A critical purpose of the requested investigations is to collect the facts … to hold accountable the individuals and groups who failed Mr. Hearn, the criminal justice system and the public.
In an email to MS NOW, a spokesperson for the Department of the Interior wrote, “David Hearn admitted to officers that he was tampering with the Reflecting Pool” and included a screenshot of a court document that cited testimony by an unnamed Park Service employee who claimed to witness Hearn “violently” ripping the pool’s lining.
“The Office of the Inspector General operates independently and makes its own decisions about what to review,” a spokesperson for the DOJ told MS NOW.
The offices of the two inspectors general did not immediately return MS NOW’s requests for comment.
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Hearn, 67, is a former slalom canoeist who represented the United States at the 1992, 1996 and 2000 Summer Olympics. During a bike ride, he stopped at the Reflecting Pool because it had been the subject of several media stories about significant algae blooms and other problems after Trump ordered its bottom be repainted for July 4th celebrations. Hearn said he put his hand in the water, felt a strip of partially detached coating and lifted it out of the water.
At a news conference on July 2, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, accused Hearn of “forcefully and violently” vandalizing the iconic pool and that prosecutors had proof “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The accusation echoed Trump’s claims, made without evidence, that vandals had caused visible damage to the Reflecting Pool, which had been drawing media coverage and embarrassing questions about the Trump-ordered renovation.
Hearn was one of several individuals charged with destruction of property related to the Reflecting Pool, but Hearn was the only one charged with a felony. At least three other individuals were charged with misdemeanor damage. Hearn pleaded not guilty to the charge. But on July 31, Pirro’s office moved to dismiss the charges against Hearn and the others, claiming that the Department of Interior had withheld a full accounting of what had happened and acknowledging that this showed Hearn was innocent of the felony vandalism charge.
The call for the inspectors general to launch an independent probe was signed by lawyers for Hearn, including Michael R. Bromwich, Steven H. Levin and Jason M. Weinstein of Steptoe; Mary Dohrmann of the Washington Litigation Group; and Norm Eisen and Joshua Kolb of Democracy Defenders Fund.
“Simply put, the record clearly shows that the USAO-DC charged Mr. Hearn despite a mountain of evidence that the Reflecting Pool was failing from installation defects, and then misled the Court about when it learned of these defects in order to cover up its own misconduct and incompetence,” the lawyers wrote.
They said Pirro’s office has admitted it sought a felony grand jury indictment “before it had the full investigative file and… when it had only ‘barebones police reports’ from the U.S. Park Police,” yet ignored its own internal evidence showing Hearn was innocent of the accusation.
“Even setting aside the mountain of public reporting on the failing liner before Mr. Hearn ever approached the pool, the prosecutors possessed written documentation that Mr. Hearn did not and could not have caused $1,000 of damage to the Reflecting Pool,” the letter said. “Nevertheless, they sought and obtained an indictment the very next day.”
The letter accuses the Department of Interior of backing the accusations against Hearn when internal documentation showed the flawed installation of the new coating was the cause of the peeling and strips of liner floating to the surface.
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Hearn’s lawyers said records show the DOJ received a “Damage Assessment” from the Department of Interior on July 1, a day before seeking a grand jury indictment of Hearn. That June 30 assessment documented pervasive damage throughout the pool as early as June 8 –- 11 days before Hearn biked up to the pool.
The Department of Interior held other evidence showing Hearn was not responsible for this peeling liner. In a June 11 email, a National Park Service engineer identified perimeter “overspray” and warned that the area was “vulnerable to peeling.” By June 22, the coating manufacturer acknowledged “localized areas of finish coat separation,” and independent experts attributed the liner failure to “application and adhesion problems.”
Trump blamed vandals for ripping gashes in the liner at the bottom of the pool, claiming people cut it with a “knife or box-cutter.” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum backed the president’s claim in a late June interview, the letter said, “even as the agency’s own contemporaneous records showed installation and adhesion failure” were to blame.
“It’s multiple gashes that add up to 350 feet across that,” Burgum said in an ABC News interview. “I mean, we weren’t expecting that we were going to have a small group of people that wanted to try to destroy, effectively, what is part of the Lincoln Memorial.”
On Aug. 1, after Pirro had withdrawn the charges against Hearn, Burgum posted a message on X, doubling down on that claim.
“The evidence is clear, vandals have repeatedly caused damage to the Reflecting Pool,” his post read. “Some of these acts were even caught on camera.”
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Hearn’s lawyers wrote in their letter that the inspectors general need to determine whether Burgum knew these statements were false or he was left in the dark by his staff, and to hold agency personnel responsible for the false claims. The claims helped push an unethical and improper prosecution that could have sent Hearn to prison for up to 10 years if he was convicted, the letter said.
“Senior agency personnel, up to and including the heads of those agencies, are not free for any reason to peddle falsehoods that advance a baseless narrative designed to appease the White House and mislead the public,” the lawyers’ letter read.
Lawyers for Hearn allege the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia never shared key evidence, including metadata for photographs, on which the charge depended. They also claim the government altered key evidence by draining the Reflecting Pool and cutting out the liner, which would have been critical evidence for the case.
Hearn’s lawyers said they recognize the inspectors general probes “will not be welcomed” by the Trump appointees who made false claims about Hearn.
“But the job description of IGs does not include pleasing people at high levels of the government,” the letter said. “In fact, the finest moments of the IG community over the past 48 years have been when it has spoken truth to power, and enforced accountability for waste, fraud, abuse, and misconduct.”
Carol Leonnig is a senior investigative reporter with MS NOW.
