Geddry is feeling happy.
The Administration Needed a Criminal
David Hearn nearly faced ten years in prison because admitting that Donald Trump’s patriotic pool makeover had been botched was less useful than inventing a saboteur.
The Trump administration has finally identified the people responsible for wrecking the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Donald Trump and the no-bid contractors his administration hired.
Federal prosecutors moved Friday to dismiss the felony case against Hearn, the 67-year-old former Olympian accused of tearing up the pool’s new blue liner with his bare hands. The government now admits the damage came not from vandals creeping across the Mall at night, but from a flawed installation and a rush to finish Trump’s America 2025 project.
The alleged sabotage was defective workmanship. The dangerous weapon was not Hearn’s hands. It was Donald Trump’s deadline.
Hearn stopped at the pool during a bike ride and touched a peeling piece of liner. He was detained for roughly five hours, arrested and initially charged with a misdemeanor. Then the administration decided the matter required more majesty. Prosecutors upgraded the charge to felony destruction of property, obtained an indictment and prepared to put him on trial.
Only afterward did they investigate what had happened to the pool.
Verdict first, facts as staffing permits.
A quality-control inspector had flagged blistering in the liner weeks before Hearn arrived. Installation records described repeated failures. The pool was leaking more than a million gallons a week, its expansion joints were worn out and at least one rip was already present. A National Park Service official testified that the same repairs were required regardless and could not quantify any damage caused by Hearn.
Jeanine Pirro held a July 2 press conference claiming “tremendous evidence.” She called Hearn’s alleged conduct a “violent effort” and said prosecutors could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he caused more than $1,000 in damage.
With what tools, a reporter asked?
His bare hands, Pirro said.
Both hands.
No crowbar, knife or industrial coating-removal device, just the nearly supernatural strength of a former Olympic canoeist touching material that had already been blistering for weeks.
Pirro now says her office did not receive the relevant Interior Department records until after Hearn was indicted. She appears to think this shifts responsibility away from her office. It does the opposite.
Federal prosecutors arrested a man, escalated the case into a felony, obtained an indictment, announced that they could prove his guilt and threatened him with a decade in prison without first obtaining the records needed to determine whether he caused any damage.
Once Trump announced sabotage, the government began searching for saboteurs. It did not investigate vandalism and arrive at Hearn. Trump declared that vandalism had occurred, and officials searched for someone whose conduct could be made to fit the accusation. The investigation was designed to give the story a defendant.
Hearn became useful because he was there.
The details are almost too perfect: patriotic blue paint peeling from a leaking pool gone green with algae; a no-bid contractor presiding; crews reportedly diverted for a UFC fight at the White House; Pirro pounding the podium over a 67-year-old Olympian’s bare hands.
But the comedy stops with Hearn.
Trump called the supposed vandals “sick people.” The phrase deserves to be returned to sender.
Touching loose liner is not what should disturb us. Arresting a man for it, upgrading the charge to a felony and threatening him with ten years in prison before determining whether a crime occurred, that is profoundly disturbed behavior.
A healthy government does not need an innocent person to absorb the consequences of its failures. A healthy administration does not convert defective workmanship into sabotage because its leader cannot tolerate admitting that his expensive patriotic paint job was peeling.
There really were sick people in this story: the people willing to gamble with an innocent man’s freedom so Donald Trump would not have to admit that his pool renovation had failed.
David Hearn came within reach of ten years in prison because the administration needed a criminal more urgently than it needed the truth.
That may be the most accurate reflection the pool has produced in years.