{"id":554818,"date":"2026-08-01T15:01:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T15:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/554818\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T15:01:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T15:01:14","slug":"olympians-charges-dropped-as-prosecutors-admit-reflecting-pool-is-flawed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/554818\/","title":{"rendered":"Olympian\u2019s charges dropped as prosecutors admit reflecting pool is \u2018flawed\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hearn\u2019s legal team said the case should never have gone to court in the first place, adding that the Trump administration owed their client an apology.<\/p>\n

The US$14 million renovation, one of Trump\u2019s vanity projects to remake the US capital ahead of the nation\u2019s 250th anniversary, has been plagued by problems \u2013 including rapid growth of algae and peeling paint.<\/p>\n

Hearn, a three-time Olympic canoeist, was arrested after officers claimed he tore up the new lining of the pool.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors alleged that on June 19, National Park Service employees observed Hearn \u201cforcefully and violently pulling up and removing\u201d approximately half a square metre of paint from the base of the pool.<\/p>\n

Hearn said he merely reached into the pool to see what the already-peeling paint felt like and was not responsible for creating any further damage or removing any paint from the pool.<\/p>\n

On the instructions of US President Donald Trump, Pirro \u2013 a former Fox News host \u2013 vowed to hold to account anyone who damaged national monuments.<\/p>\n

– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hearn\u2019s legal team said the case should never have gone to court in the first place, adding that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[37879,5811,9092,806,1873,157049,26034,28157,118976,2740,42,185,6148,43,46449,98449,5198,26481,97813,18047,9939,1361,40,38,41,39,9938,26995,2988],"class_list":["post-554818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-admit","tag-admitted","tag-against","tag-as","tag-charges","tag-dcs","tag-department","tag-dropped","tag-flawed","tag-former","tag-headlines","tag-is","tag-justice","tag-news","tag-olympian","tag-olympians","tag-pool","tag-prosecutors","tag-reflecting","tag-renovation","tag-states","tag-that","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united","tag-vandalism","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}