Federal prosecutors in Washington dropped misdemeanor charges against three people accused of damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the same week President Trump publicly rebuked U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro for dismissing the case against a former Olympian.
The three defendants, Justin Carreno, Sophie Dennison-Gibby, and Cameron Thiers, each faced accusations of destroying property valued at less than $1,000. D.C. Superior Court's website now lists all three cases as closed, the Washington Examiner reported. The dismissals came days after Pirro's office moved to toss a felony charge against David Hearn, a Maryland resident and former Olympic canoeist who represented the United States at three Summer Games between 1992 and 2000.
Prosecutors said the Interior Department's own evidence showed the damage to the Reflecting Pool was caused by a "rushed and flawed installation" of the pool lining, not by vandals. They accused Interior officials of withholding critical documents until after a grand jury had already indicted Hearn.
The Reflecting Pool had undergone a renovation that included the installation of a new liner, part of a broader effort Trump personally championed ahead of the July 4th celebration marking America's 250th anniversary. The contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, oversprayed and failed to properly bond the coatings during what the New York Post reported was a rushed $14 million job. The lining began peeling "almost immediately" after installation.
A National Park Service engineer flagged peeling concerns on June 11, eight days before Hearn was arrested. That warning never reached prosecutors.
Instead, the Interior Department initially told Pirro's office that "nearly all" of the damage stemmed from vandalism. Only after Hearn's indictment did the department hand over 695 megabytes of documents revealing the contractor's failures. Pirro's prosecutors said in their motion to dismiss that the new material made it "difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt."
Hearn had pleaded not guilty after prosecutors accused him of forcefully ripping portions of the renovated pool floor. He faced up to 10 years in prison on felony destruction-of-property charges. His attorneys, Norm Eisen, Mary Dohrmann, and Steve Levin, said the case amounted to an abuse of government power. As Breitbart reported, Hearn told the Washington Post he "didn't vandalize anything" and was "being put in handcuffs" before he understood what was happening.
His lawyers put it bluntly:
"The government's approach was ready, fire, aim. The administration owes Mr. Hearn an apology."
Trump made no effort to hide his displeasure. On Truth Social, the president wrote: "I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro... on the Reflecting Pool. To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM." Speaking publicly on Monday, he said Pirro had "choked" and "folded like an umbrella," adding that he was "really disappointed" by her decision. He did acknowledge there "may have been some contractor difficulty."
CNN reported that Trump had considered removing Pirro from her post over the dismissal. That same Monday afternoon, Pirro reportedly arrived at the White House carrying a large white box and other bags filled with Interior Department material. Sources familiar with the matter told CBS News that she used the evidence during a "sometimes heated" private Oval Office meeting with the president.
The DOJ's recent decision to drop remaining charges against a Proud Boys member in a Jan. 6 case drew similar attention to the tension between prosecutorial judgment and political expectations. But the Reflecting Pool episode laid bare a different problem: a federal agency that fed prosecutors bad information, then left them holding the bag.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum pushed back. In an August 1 post on X, Burgum wrote that "the evidence is clear, vandals have repeatedly caused damage to the Reflecting Pool" and that "some of these acts were even caught on camera." He said the department had provided "expert and eyewitness testimony to the damage done by vandals and provided every piece of evidence they" requested, though the post appeared to be truncated.
Burgum's claim sits in direct tension with what prosecutors wrote in their dismissal motion. The U.S. Attorney's office blamed Interior officials for withholding the very documents that undercut the vandalism theory, documents that did not arrive until after a grand jury had already returned an indictment.
The three misdemeanor defendants paid real costs while the government sorted out its own failures. The Washington Post reported that Carreno was fired from his job as a government contractor because of the charges. He also moved homes. His attorney told CBS that the government had "literally fabricated a crime." Carreno is now exploring legal options.
Dennison-Gibby's attorney told USA Today his client was "relieved" by the dismissal but had been "terrified" after Trump publicly referred to the defendants as "sick people who faced jail time." The attorney for Thiers has not commented publicly.
The pattern of ordinary people absorbing the consequences of institutional failure is familiar. In other recent DOJ actions involving Jan. 6 defendants, the department has sought dismissals on procedural grounds, raising persistent questions about whether the government applies the same standard of care to charging decisions that it demands from the citizens it prosecutes.
When the Washington Examiner asked the White House about the misdemeanor dismissals on Tuesday, a spokesperson simply referred the outlet to the president's earlier Oval Office remarks. A spokesman for Pirro's office did not respond to repeated attempts to seek comment.
Fox News opinion columnist David Marcus framed the dropped charges not as a loss for the president but as a way out of a story that was becoming harder to defend. Court documents had already shown the damage was the contractor's fault, and Marcus argued that Pirro's decision reflected proper legal judgment rather than political betrayal.
Just The News noted that the rushed construction timeline, driven by the push to finish before the 250th anniversary celebrations, created conditions that made the contractor's failures almost inevitable. The renovation was supposed to showcase national pride. Instead it produced a federal prosecution built on evidence the government's own agency knew was flawed.
The episode also fits a broader pattern of high-profile legal cases involving Trump-era figures that have tested public confidence in federal prosecutorial standards. When the government charges first and checks its evidence later, the defendants pay the price regardless of the outcome.
Hearn's attorneys captured the core failure in a single line: the dismissal "does not erase the abuse of government power in arresting and charging a patriotic American who did nothing wrong."
The Interior Department gave prosecutors bad information, prosecutors ran with it, and four Americans, including a three-time Olympian and a government contractor who lost his livelihood, got caught in the wreckage. Dropping the charges was the right call. The question nobody in Washington seems eager to answer is who, exactly, is accountable for bringing them in the first place.