{"id":8905,"date":"2026-08-11T18:11:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T18:11:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=8905"},"modified":"2026-08-11T18:11:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T18:11:22","slug":"house-democrats-seek-records-in-dropped-reflecting-pool-case-against-ex-olympian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=8905","title":{"rendered":"House Democrats seek records in dropped Reflecting Pool case against ex-Olympian"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cHow did this debacle happen?\u201d Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, wrote in his letter. (Elizabeth Frantz\/Reuters)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

House Democrats are pushing the Trump administration to release records related to the felony prosecution of a former Olympian<\/a> who had been accused of damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, questioning whether prosecutors were misled in an attempt to conceal a \u201cbotched\u201d renovation.<\/p>

Read more In a partisan age, a Democratic governor goes outside her brand for a running mate<\/a><\/p>\n

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee made the move days after a judge granted federal prosecutors\u2019 request to drop a felony charge<\/a> against David Hearn, attributing the pool damage to faulty installation.<\/p>\n

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) sent a letter Tuesday to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro requesting the release of all documents related to the decision to prosecute Hearn and any communications between the agencies and the White House about the case.<\/p>\n

The letter called on the departments to answer whether President <\/b>Donald Trump exerted pressure to \u201cretaliate against and scapegoat an American citizen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow did this debacle happen?\u201d wrote Raskin, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. \u201cThe conclusion seems inescapable that at least one, if not both, of you have misled the American public about the evidence and used it to corrupt and weaponize our justice system against an innocent 67-year-old American citizen.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on July 15. The newly renovated pool was drained to fix its peeling liner and algae problems. (Alex Wroblewski\/AFP\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

Pirro\u2019s office<\/a> maintains it didn\u2019t know about the widespread damage at the Reflecting Pool until after the indictment, accusing the Interior Department of withholding documents indicating the peeling was caused by flawed installation. But Hearn\u2019s attorneys say<\/a> there\u2019s evidence that they knew of problems before indicting him.<\/p>\n

Asked for comment on the letter, the White House referred The Washington Post to Trump\u2019s previous Truth Social posts alleging vandalism.<\/p>\n

The Interior Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Department of Justice follows the evidence when determining if crimes have been committed,\u201d the federal agency said in a statement. \u201cWe always evaluate any case based on the facts and the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Raskin\u2019s letter comes after Hearn\u2019s attorneys alleged that prosecutors may have misled jurors to secure an indictment against him. In a filing last week<\/a>, the attorneys alleged that a key government witness testified that repairs would have been necessary regardless of Hearn\u2019s actions but that prosecutors recalled the witness and \u201celicited\u201d them to say that damage \u201cattributable to Mr. Hearn\u201d would be more than $1,000.<\/p>\n

The attorneys are asking the judge to ensure federal prosecutors can\u2019t charge Hearn again in the future.<\/p>\n

Pirro, a longtime Trump ally, has faced intense public scrutiny over the decision to prosecute Hearn and others alleged to have damaged the pool and again after <\/b>abruptly dropping the cases.<\/p>\n

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Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for D.C., speaks at a news conference on July 2. (Anna Moneymaker\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

In the letter, Raskin points to Trump\u2019s repeated comments about renovating the Reflecting Pool. Raskin also questioned the noncompetitive process in awarding a contract and referred to reporting from CNN<\/a> that another company declined the July 4 deadline.<\/p>

Read more Trump demands major changes to childhood vaccine recommendations<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump\u2019s \u2018highly sophisticated\u2019 and slapdash paint job didn\u2019t even last 100 days, much less a century,\u201d Raskin said.<\/p>\n

Atlantic Industrial Coatings, the contractor, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Despite reports of Reflecting Pool renovation failures before June 19, when Hearn touched a piece of the detached liner, Raskin said Trump and Burgum latched on to the claim that vandalism was to blame. Pirro followed with a felony charge<\/a> against Hearn in July. He was initially charged with a misdemeanor count of destruction of government property.<\/p>\n

The case collapsed the same month. Pirro\u2019s office said in a court filing<\/a> that the Interior Department did not provide sufficient information ahead of the indictment, including an email from an engineer on June 11 detailing the peeling of the liner.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter DOJ\u2019s filing, President Trump went off the deep end of the Reflecting Pool, you might say,\u201d Raskin said in the letter.<\/p>\n

Trump has <\/b>blasted Pirro for dropping the vandalism charge against Hearn and three others <\/b>and has continued to blame the former Olympian.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Trump again accused Hearn of \u201c\u2018violently\u2019 ripping and tugging at the Pool\u2019s somewhat delicate coating\u201d in a social media post. He conceded that there was \u201csome contractor error\u201d due to the rushed job but that it damaged only a small area.<\/p>\n

Raskin poked jabs at Trump in the letter, referencing \u201clocal vandalism crimes,\u201d including the East Wing demolition and the affixing of Trump\u2019s name to the Kennedy Center. A judge later ordered the removal of the name.<\/p>\n

The letter requests that the records in the pool case be shared by Aug. 25.<\/p>\n

In a statement Tuesday, attorneys for Hearn said they \u201cwelcome any Congressional oversight that seeks the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we have stated from the beginning, the indictment of Davey Hearn was a clear miscarriage of justice and an egregious misuse of government power,\u201d Norm Eisen, Mary Dohrmann and Steve Levin said in the statement. \u201cOur client and the American public deserve the truth, so it won\u2019t happen again.\u201d<\/p>

Read more Nationals ride their bullpen to a sweep-clinching rout of the Reds<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rep. Jamie Raskin sent a letter to the Justice and Interior departments pressing for more information on the felony prosecution of David Hearn. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nHouse Democrats seek records in dropped Reflecting Pool case against ex-Olympian - Moving Insider USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=8905\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"House Democrats seek records in dropped Reflecting Pool case against ex-Olympian - Moving Insider USA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Rep. 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