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 Department of Interior hid proof that a contractor's shoddy work, not Hearn, damaged the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Pirro's office filed the motion on July 31, laying out in blunt language how the Interior Department fed prosecutors a misleading account of what happened to the iconic pool, then slow-walked hundreds of megabytes of documents showing the real culprit was a Virginia contractor that botched a $14 million coating job. The filing amounts to a rare public rebuke of a federal agency by the government's own prosecutors, and it leaves serious questions about why Interior officials pointed the finger at a private citizen when they already knew the pool's new lining was peeling before anyone touched it.

Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist, was arrested on June 19 after National Park Service employees said they saw him tug at an upturned piece of the pool's sealant lining. Park Police cuffed him next to his bicycle. He was charged with one felony count of destruction of property. He pleaded not guilty.

The charge carried real weight, a felony, not a citation, over what the Interior Department itself later assessed as $1,000 in damage. And the entire prosecution rested on representations Interior made to Pirro's office before the grand jury convened: that "nearly all of the damage to the Reflecting Pool was due to vandalism."

That claim was false. The court filing makes clear Pirro's prosecutors did not learn the truth until after they had already secured the indictment.

A $14 million paint job was already failing before Hearn arrived

The timeline laid out in the motion to dismiss tells a damning story about the contractor's work and Interior's knowledge of it. Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a Virginia-based firm, received a no-bid contract from the Department of Interior to coat the Reflecting Pool's 68,000-square-foot bottom. Work crews began spraying Rhino 406 and Pipeliner 5000 coatings in early May and finished on June 9.

Two days later, eight full days before Hearn's arrest, a National Park Service engineer flagged a problem. In a June 11 email included in the court filing, the engineer wrote that he had raised concerns about overspray along the pool's perimeter.

"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."

So a government engineer warned that the coating could peel. The contractor refused to say whether it would hold. And then, when it did peel, Interior told prosecutors the damage was vandalism.

Pirro, who has drawn attention for her aggressive posture on law-and-order cases since her appointment as DC's top federal prosecutor, visited the Reflecting Pool site herself on July 1. Her office convened a grand jury the very next day, July 2, and the grand jury returned the indictment against Hearn.

At that point, prosecutors were working from what the filing calls "barebones police reports" provided by the US Park Police. The Park Police were slow to respond to requests for additional material and eventually produced body-worn camera footage covering roughly ten individuals.

Interior trickled out 695 megabytes of documents, only after the indictment

It was not until mid-July, after Hearn had already been indicted, that the Department of Interior finally handed over 695 megabytes of additional documents about the installation process. Those files told a very different story from the one Interior had been pushing.

The court filing stated that the damage "was the result of flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings ('AIC'), and the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026."

Pirro's office did not hold back about what Interior had done. The filing said the department "provided less than fulsome information at the outset of this case" and that its "failure to fully and accurately provide information to USAODC undermined the government's ability to abide by these responsibilities."

Getting that information required extraordinary effort. Prosecutors said they "repeatedly reached out to DOI dozens and dozens of times" before Interior "slowly started trickling information" to them.

The bottom line, as the motion put it: "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."

Hearn's attorneys say the government owes him an apology

Hearn's legal team, attorneys Norm Eisen, Mary Dohrmann, and Steve Levin, issued a statement that went further than the court filing. They called the prosecution an abuse of power.

"The government's approach was ready, fire, aim. The administration owes Mr. Hearn an apology."

They added that the case "should never have been brought" and that the dismissal "does not erase the abuse of government power in arresting and charging a patriotic American who did nothing wrong."

Hearn himself seemed to sense something was off from the start. On the day of his arrest, he remarked that National Park Service employees were "awfully sensitive about the pool." Video footage posted on X shortly after the incident showed him being cuffed by Park Police next to his bicycle; he noted the peeled-back lining was "really funny."

In the context of what the court filing now reveals, Hearn's bemusement looks well-founded. The lining was already coming apart on its own. A government engineer had said so in writing more than a week earlier.

Broader damage claims remain unresolved

President Trump had previously stated that six people were arrested in connection with damage to the Reflecting Pool in June, describing a "350 foot gash, made by a very sharp knife or razors." The filing does not address those broader claims or clarify how much of the total damage, beyond the $1,000 attributed to Hearn, was caused by the contractor's failed installation versus any other source.

Pirro has handled several high-profile cases since taking over the DC US Attorney's office, including the prosecution of a man accused of attempting to assassinate President Trump. In this instance, her willingness to publicly blame the Interior Department for undermining the case is notable, it is not common for a US Attorney's office to file a motion that effectively accuses a sister agency of misleading prosecutors.

The Department of Interior did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Atlantic Industrial Coatings, which received the no-bid contract worth more than $14 million, has not publicly addressed the allegations in the court filing.

Several questions remain unanswered. On what basis was AIC awarded a no-bid contract for such a large project? Who within Interior decided to represent the damage as vandalism to prosecutors? And why did Interior resist turning over documents until Pirro's office pressed "dozens and dozens of times"?

The broader pattern matters beyond this single case. When a federal agency can point prosecutors at a private citizen, secure a felony indictment on incomplete information, and then drag its feet on turning over exculpatory evidence, the system has a problem that one dismissed charge does not fix. The recurring theme of federal agencies failing to share critical information, whether it involves security lapses or prosecutorial integrity, erodes public trust in institutions that are supposed to serve the people, not protect their own mistakes.

Credit to Pirro for pulling the plug when the facts changed. But someone at the Department of Interior decided it was easier to blame a man on a bicycle than to admit a contractor botched a $14 million job. That person still has a desk, a title, and zero accountability.