Few Americans will look back on this year’s 250th celebrations with as much relief and bewilderment as David Hearn. Until June 19th, one of the most decorated white-water canoeists in US sports history had reason to believe his public profile was in his past. That day, on a visit to Washington, he visited the Lincoln Memorial and, like many visitors, was intrigued by the water algae and floating chunks of sealant spoiling the surface of perhaps the best-known water feature in the city.
He took a photograph or two and reached in to touch the material. He was apprehended by authorities, arrested, questioned for hours and, in short order, charged with a felony destruction of federal property, which carried up to 10 years in prison.
Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia and a long-time friend of US president Donald Trump, had made the case sound like a fait accompli in her initial media appearance, saying that “national park employees observed him forcibly and violently pulling up and removing the liner with both hands”.
A trial date was set for September 25th. But on Friday, Pirro submitted a 20-page request to the court judge, Todd Edelman, requesting that he dismiss the case. There was zero proof of Hearn’s culpability. Instead, Pirro’s document conceded, the spoliation of the pool was down to “hasty and botched installation, not vandalism”.
RM Block
Hearn was free and is now considering several courses of action, including lawsuits. Pirro was assumed to be on the verge of losing her job while Trump interpreted the latest prosecutorial failure as a loss of nerve.
“Frankly, I think she choked,” he said on Monday. “Because the judge was really vicious. Instead of going after the people that did it, the judge went after her and after her department. I was disappointed in Jeanine Pirro, really disappointed in Jeanine Pirro. She folded like an umbrella.”
The ongoing reflecting pool saga has held a curious place in the overall Trump administration burlesque. It was, of course, a sideshow novelty when set against the travesties of the Iran war and its associated deaths and widespread economic miseries. The renovation was part of the administration’s project to beautify Washington’s historic monuments, some of which have yielded spectacular successes. But the reflecting pool was to play a significant role in the visual portraiture of the Fourth of July celebrations and was therefore under considerable time pressure, something Trump inadvertently conceded as he blasted Pirro.
“We have photographs or tapes of people on the side cutting it with a box knife. I am not saying I was a hundred per cent thrilled with the contractor. But the contractor was rushing – we wanted to get it opened for July Fourth. But there was vandalism. Look at the grass – it was all knocked out with a very powerful ingredient we all know very well what it is. We had to replace the grass. In addition, they took knives or cutters, and they cut the material, and they pulled it,” he said.
Trump had taken a personal interest in the renovation of the pool, proudly declaring that the new sealant on the concrete floor would not only end the leaking that had dogged the feature since its opening in 1922, but it would reflect the colour of the US flag of “American blue”. And it would succeed in fixing what the Biden and Obama administrations had failed to.
Unfortunately, much like the Kennedy Centre, the reflecting pool seemed to wither on the vine as soon as Trump began to personally nurture its future. For a few days, the pool did look deeply blue. But then it turned a chemical green, was stricken by the appearance of algae and, for a brief time, dead ducks floating on its surface, all of which provided an irresistible metaphor for opinion writers and satirists. So, too, did the identity of the owner of Green Water Solutions, the company which won the no-bid contract for the sealant work, JJ Cafaro.
As the Fourth of July approached, the pool was part of a staggering aerial-photograph eyesore in which the National Mall had been rendered a construction site encompassing the demolished east wing of the White House. And it was a source of embarrassment for the president and senior figures, including secretary of interior Doug Burgum, who were adamant that the renovation had been maliciously ruined by vandalism.
For most of the nation, the saga was simply another bizarre footnote in a surreal decade for US politics. For David Hearn, it was his freedom. The superior court in DC was crowded for his first hearing on July 9th. Outside, some supporters came wearing canoeist gear. Hearn had operated a canoe supply business for decades after his competitive career. As he told The Atlantic magazine, he knew about sealant materials and was curious about whatever was floating in the pool on the day of his visit. It became clear then that the ineptitude which informed the renovation job had literally leaked into the case against Pirro.
“Despite the importance of the pool liner to the case, in the brief period since June 19th, 2026, the same government that presented and returned the indictment against Mr Hearn has fenced off the scene, begun draining the pool yet again, and publicly announced its intention to repair the very liner whose condition is at issue,” the defendant’s attorneys pointed out in a statement, adding that they had sent a representative to the site which confirmed that “spoliation of evidence” had taken place. Judge Adelman, in setting the date, warned the prosecution that it was “operating at its own peril” in the way it was advancing the case.
Speculation is rife that Trump will, eventually, move Pirro on from the role she has held since last summer. The episode continues to reside in an uneasy place between public mirth and the gravity of the full weight of the presidency attempting to prosecute a citizen for a federal crime with evidence which did not exist.
“Imagine what it feels like – you watch TV, and you have the president and other administration officials saying you could go to jail for 10 years,” said Norm Eisen, a member of his legal team over the weekend. “But it is not just his personal situation that he is focused on. He is focused on what this means for our democracy; on the other innocent people who have been targeted over and over again.”
Spare a thought for Abraham Lincoln in all of this. All summer long, Honest Abe’s statue has been forced to stare across the stagnant and befouled water of the shallow reflecting pool beneath his memorial, which has, since its grand reopening, become a symbolic quagmire for the 47th president and the administration. The reflecting pool is scheduled to reopen in mid-August.
