The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General has declined to investigate the circumstances surrounding the failed prosecution of former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, a case that collapsed after prosecutors charged him with felony damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
In a letter dated Wednesday, Hearn’s legal team urged Inspector General Don R. Berthiaume to reconsider the decision, citing evidence of what they describe as numerous potential criminal violations by Justice Department personnel, as well as joint misconduct involving employees from the Department of Interior.
The case against Hearn began in July when prosecutors charged him with causing felony damage to President Donald Trump’s renovations of the historic Reflecting Pool. The President himself had publicly blamed Hearn and other individuals he characterized as vandals for the damage to the newly renovated site.
However, the prosecution quickly unraveled. By the end of July, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro’s office moved to dismiss the charges, determining that the damage to the pool resulted from flawed installation work by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings. A federal judge subsequently dismissed the case and barred the government from filing charges against Hearn again.
Hearn’s attorneys maintain their client should never have faced charges. According to their correspondence with the inspector general, prosecutors possessed evidence prior to filing charges that demonstrated Hearn’s actions caused no harm or monetary loss, both necessary elements for the felony charge they brought against him.
The legal team has raised particularly serious concerns about conduct during the grand jury proceedings. They allege a government witness initially provided testimony unfavorable to the prosecution, stating that repairs would have been necessary regardless of any actions by Hearn, that the witness could not determine whether Hearn damaged the pool lining, and that the witness could not quantify any incremental repair costs attributable to Hearn’s conduct.
What happened next, according to Hearn’s attorneys, raises troubling questions about prosecutorial conduct. Following a 21-minute off-the-record break, the same witness returned to provide markedly different testimony, now stating the damage was definitely $1,000 or more, the precise threshold required to charge a felony rather than a misdemeanor.
The letter to the inspector general specifically requests an investigation into whether prosecutors knowingly caused the witness to alter testimony regarding the magnitude of the alleged damage and whether they induced false testimony to support felony charges.
Hearn’s legal team characterized the rush to indict their client as mirroring the rushed renovation of the Reflecting Pool itself, suggesting that haste and incompetence pervaded both the construction project and the subsequent prosecution.
The Inspector General’s office has not yet responded to requests for comment regarding the decision or the appeal to reconsider.
This case raises significant questions about prosecutorial discretion and the safeguards that should exist to prevent charges from moving forward when exculpatory evidence exists. The apparent transformation of witness testimony during grand jury proceedings, if substantiated, would represent a serious breach of prosecutorial ethics and legal standards.
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