Trump insists vandals damaged Reflecting Pool, blasts DOJ for dropped charge

The president said he disagreed "100%" with U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, who reversed course by dropping her felony charge against Olympic canoeist David Hearn.

August 1, 2026

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Thursday. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

By Olivia George and Dan Diamond

President Donald Trump said Saturday he disagreed “100%” with the decision by federal prosecutors to drop a criminal charge of vandalism against a man accused of damaging the Reflecting Pool, rebuking U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, one of his staunchest allies.

In a case that drew national attention, David “Davey” Hearn, a 67-year-old Olympic canoeist, was indicted on a felony charge after Pirro, the top federal prosecutor in D.C. and a longtime Trump ally, alleged that he “forcefully and violently” ripped the newly installed liner on the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool.

Pirro’s office reversed course Friday, with a court filing that said the peeling of the liner was the result of a botched installation by a contractor rushing to finish the project ahead of celebrations to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary.

“I don’t know what she was thinking?” Trump wrote of Pirro on Truth Social on Saturday. “To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM.” He acknowledged that “there may have been some contractor difficulty” but said the major cause was vandalism.

The president has wrestled with numerous hurdles in his efforts to remake the nation’s capital in his image, a sweeping undertaking that has drawn lawsuits, ignited alarm over soaring costs and stirred criticism for disregarding regulations.

Hearn and his legal team had called the case an “outrageous” abuse of prosecutorial resources by the Trump administration. Hearn has said he was cycling past the pool in June and reached his hand into the water only to touch a piece of liner that was already dislodged.

After prosecutors dropped the charges, Hearn’s legal team said in a statement that they considered the case “far from over” and that their client is considering legal remedies.

“Trump is mad at Pirro because she finally admitted what we made clear in our legal filings all along: Trump’s botched renovation was responsible for the damage--not Davey Hearn,” the attorneys said.

Pirro’s office did not immediately respond Saturday to a request for comment.

The contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday, though the contractor defended its work in a June statement on its website.

Prosecutors attributed their Friday decision to new information they received from Interior Department documents showing that “the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism as initially represented” by the department.

DOJ drops Reflecting Pool charge, citing ‘botched’ work and contradicting Trump

Ex-Olympian accused of Reflecting Pool vandalism pleads not guilty

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum sided with Trump on Saturday, writing on X that the “evidence is clear” that vandalism was what damaged the pool.

Trump unveiled his plan to overhaul the historic site in April, predicting that the work would cost less than $2 million and be completed in less than two weeks. The cost ultimately ballooned to more than $14 million, and work stretched on for six weeks, amid questions from preservationists and other experts about whether Trump’s rapid renovations would backfire.

The pool was soon beset by algae outbreaks, and the basin’s new “American flag blue” liner began to peel. The president responded by alleging vandals were to blame, accusing them of cutting parts of the pool with knives and box cutters.

A Washington Post analysis of satellite imagery and photos and videos taken in June during the renovation found that the basin’s peeling was probably due to application errors. The findings were supported by experts in waterproofing materials, while administration officials continued to dispute that the surface had been improperly applied.

Hearn has a status hearing scheduled for Thursday.

“The government’s approach was ready, fire, aim,” his lawyers said in a statement, soon after prosecutors moved to dismiss charges against Hearn. “The administration owes Mr. Hearn an apology.”

Jasmine Golden contributed to this report.

What readers are saying

The comments express strong criticism of President Donald Trump, focusing on his alleged dishonesty and refusal to take responsibility for the damage to the Reflecting Pool, which many attribute to his administration's actions rather than vandalism. Commenters highlight his... Show more

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On Sat, Aug 1, 2026 at 3:41 PM Chas Freeman <cwfresidence@gmail.com> wrote:

Charges Dropped in Reflecting Pool Case as Prosecutors Say Work Was ‘Botched’
A former Olympian will not face trial after federal prosecutors acknowledged that the Trump administration’s claims of vandalism were false.
Listen · 7:24 min The New York Times
David Hearn, center, pleaded not guilty this month to a felony charge of vandalism. Prosecutors had accused him of ripping the Reflecting Pool’s lining.Credit...Rod Lamkey/Associated Press
By Madaleine Rubin and David A. Fahrenthold
Published July 31, 2026Updated Aug. 1, 2026, 10:11 a.m. ET
See more of our coverage in your search results. Add The New York Times on Google
Federal prosecutors on Friday said that contractors hired by the Trump administration had botched the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, leaving behind “widespread damage” in the pool’s new blue lining, and that the Interior Department had then falsely blamed that damage on vandals.
In an extraordinary motion filed Friday evening, the U.S. attorney in Washington, Jeanine Pirro, said she was seeking to dismiss a felony charge against David Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist who was accused of pulling up a piece of the pool’s lining two feet square.
In doing so, Ms. Pirro — a longtime ally of President Trump’s — directly contradicted the president’s repeated claim that the Reflecting Pool’s peeling liner was caused by people slashing its coating with knives. Instead, she said, “the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism.”
Earlier this month, Ms. Pirro herself had echoed the president’s claims, calling a news conference to announce Mr. Hearn’s indictment on July 2. She said that she had “tremendous evidence” that Mr. Hearn had committed a felony, and noted that he faced up to 10 years in prison.
But on Friday, Ms. Pirro said that her prosecutors had been misled by the Interior Department, which had awarded a no-bid contract to a first-time government contractor to repair the iconic landmark.
Ms. Pirro said that the pool’s new blue coating had actually started to peel within two days of the project’s completion, and that the Interior Department kept that fact from prosecutors, telling them that “nearly all of the damage” was done by vandals.
Image
Marine One flying past the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool earlier this week. The pool was drained so that the faults in the lining could be inspected and repaired. Credit...Andrew Leyden for The New York Times
Later, Ms. Pirro said, prosecutors visited the pool themselves and saw that could not be true. The lining was peeling in many places, some far from the edge where Mr. Hearn had stood. After that, she said, prosecutors had demanded more information from the Interior Department, which made clear that the pool’s problems had developed during the renovation itself.
“Given all of this newly discovered information, it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism,” Ms. Pirro wrote in her motion to the court.
The filing was a remarkable and detailed indictment of a project that, until now, the Trump administration had defended as an astounding success. “President Donald J. Trump is an expert builder who fixed the Reflecting Pool permanently before deranged people vandalized it,” Katie Martin, an Interior Department spokeswoman, said earlier this month.
Ms. Pirro blamed both the government’s vendor and the administration’s timetable, saying the pool’s poor state “was the result of a flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, and the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration” on July 4.
The Interior Department did not respond to questions about the filing on Friday evening. It is not clear if there would be consequences for the Interior Department officials whom Ms. Pirro accused of deception.
The Reflecting Pool has been fenced off and drained so the faults in the lining can be inspected and repaired. In a recent filing in a separate court case, the Interior Department said it would be closed until August 10.
Six other people have been arrested on charges of vandalism, federal officials have said. Three face misdemeanor charges of destruction of property under $1,000, court records show.
Mr. Hearn, who pleaded not guilty last month, was the only person known to be facing a felony charge, rather than a misdemeanor, related to Mr. Trump’s false claims of vandalism to the pool. A lawyer for one of the other defendants said Friday night that his case had not been dropped. It was unclear what happened to the rest. Ms. Pirro’s office could not immediately be reached for comment.
Mr. Hearn’s trial on a charge of destruction of property had been scheduled to begin on Sept. 28.
In a statement on Friday, lawyers representing him said that the charges should never have been brought.
The move to dismiss charges “does not erase the abuse of government power in arresting and charging a patriotic American who did nothing wrong,” the statement said. “The government’s approach was ready, fire, aim. The administration owes Mr. Hearn an apology.”
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Reflecting Pool, built in the 1920s, has been plagued for years by water leaking out between its long concrete slabs.
This year, the Interior Department bypassed regular procedures to give a no-bid contract to fix the pool to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a small firm in rural Virginia. Mr. Trump said at first that he had chosen the firm personally, because it had repaired a pool at one of his golf clubs.
Later, Mr. Trump reversed himself and said he did not know the firm.
The Interior Department asked the firm to do something that had never been done before at the pool: In addition to filling the gaps between the slabs, it wanted the contractor to spread a dark blue waterproof coating across the pool floor, including the slabs themselves. That added time and cost. The company also added a 20 percent profit margin to its bill, according to internal documents obtained by The New York Times. So far, the government has agreed to pay the company $14.7 million.
Soon, problems appeared. The firm’s first efforts to seal the gaps between the slabs failed, internal documents showed. Bubbles and holes appeared in the blue coating. The work fell behind schedule. The pool was finally finished and refilled in early June.
But both Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Mr. Trump insisted that the damage to the pool was caused by vandals, not errors in the installation. The Justice Department motion revealed that this account was not just for public consumption: Prosecutors said that the Interior Department had told them the same.
Atlantic Industrial Coatings did not respond to requests for comment on Friday evening. In the past, the company has defended its work, saying that the problems affected a “very small part” of the pool’s lining, and that it would fix them under warranty.
The Trump administration also awarded a no-bid contract to add water-purification devices called “nanobubblers” to the pool’s filtration system. But soon after the pool was refilled, an algae bloom turned its water bright green, in part because the nanobubblers had been removed during the time that a promotional event connected to an Ultimate Fighting Championship Event at the White House was planned at the Lincoln Memorial.
Mr. Trump claimed that the algae bloom, too, was the work of vandals dumping in fertilizer, though the pool had been plagued by algae blooms for decades. No one has been charged with adding fertilizer to the pool.
Clarence Williams contributed reporting.
David A. Fahrenthold is a Times investigative reporter writing about nonprofit organizations. He has been a reporter for two decades.
A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 1, 2026, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Botched’ Job, Not Sabotage, Damaged Pool.

Re: [Salon] Charges Dropped in Reflecting Pool Case as Prosecutors Say Work Was ‘Botched’

Trump insists vandals damaged Reflecting Pool, blasts DOJ for dropped charge

Charges Dropped in Reflecting Pool Case as Prosecutors Say Work Was ‘Botched’