Federal judge raises ‘meritless re-prosecution’ in Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool hearing

A Washington judge peppered federal prosecutors with questions on Friday about President Trump’s recent remarks about an Olympian accused of damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, as the prosecutors sought to convince him that the possibility of future charges should be left open.

Superior Court Judge Todd Edelman asked assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Spence how he was supposed to look at the president’s statements about David Hearn, one of his attorneys and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro as “anything other than [Trump] pressuring your office, your boss and the three of you to charge Mr. Hearn, recharge Mr. Hearn with what you had decided to be a meritless prosecution.”

“Isn’t this a unique threat of meritless re-prosecution?” Edelman said.

Spence replied only that Trump’s statements “speak for themselves,” while also arguing it was premature to discuss that hypothetical notion because no further grand jury action had happened.

The exchange came during a hearing to decide whether a case against Hearn should be dismissed for good after the U.S. attorney’s office backed away from the case due to insufficient evidence to support felony charges.

That move drew the ire of Trump, who bashed Pirro on multiple occasions as he urged her to reconsider.

“She folded like an umbrella,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Aug. 3, saying she “choked.” It was a rare public break between the two usually friendly allies, leaving Pirro’s job security in limbo.

Trump later lashed out at Hearn, referencing the Olympic canoeist’s prior donations to Democrats through the ActBlue fundraising platform.

“A National Park Service career employee, a highly credible witness, saw David Hearn (ActBlue) in broad daylight vandalize the Reflecting Pool by ‘violently’ ripping and tugging at the Pool’s somewhat delicate coating,” the president wrote in an Aug. 9 post on Truth Social.

Hearn was charged with felony destruction of property in early July after prosecutors alleged that they had enough evidence to prove that he had “willfully damaged” the landmark by ripping up a piece of sealant. He initially pleaded not guilty and was scheduled to go to trial at the end of this month.

But several weeks later, Pirro’s office conceded a flawed and rushed installation by a no-bid contractor, not vandalism, was likely responsible for the peeling paint.

Prosecutors blamed the Interior Department for failing to hand over complete information before the case was presented to a grand jury and moved to dismiss the charges.

Edelman granted that request in early August but deferred a decision on whether prosecutors should be allowed to try to charge Hearn again at a later date. Hearn’s attorneys have asked that the case be dismissed with prejudice, meaning it would be closed for good.

“Why are they reserving the right to reindict a case they acknowledge should never have been indicted?” Steve Levin, one of Hearn’s lawyers, told the judge. He said there was “no legitimate purpose” to keep the prosecution alive.

Soon after the more than $14 million remodel of the Reflecting Pool was completed in early June, chunks of the “American flag blue” coating hand-picked by Trump began peeling and floating to the water’s surface.

The president quickly blamed the issues on vandalism, alleging that detractors intentionally cut a lengthy slit into the lining. But court filings indicate a National Park Service engineer warned within days of the installation that the “top layer of the liner has peeled.”

Edelman did not issue a ruling from the bench, saying only that the parties should expect to hear from him soon.