A former Olympic canoeist who had been arrested in June on charges that he had vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has been indicted, according to court documents. He is charged with “destruction of property $1,000 or more,” a felony.
President Trump blamed vandals for the problems following a quick and costly makeover of the pool, and the canoeist, David Carter Hearn, 67, of Bethesda, Md., was among the first to be charged. The U.S. Park Police had arrested Mr. Hearn near the pool on June 19, and accused him of destroying government property.
Past administrations have wrestled with leaks and algae in the pool, but experts said the recent problems could have been caused by the pool’s hasty makeover. President Trump has blamed vandals, who he said — without offering evidence — had poured fertilizer into the water to nurture the algae and slashed the coating of blue liner on the pool’s bottom.
Mr. Hearn was not charged with doing either of those things. He is accused of pulling up a piece of the liner after the liner had already started to peel. The Park Service has provided photos of blade cuts in a different part of the repair work — strips of caulking, separate from the blue lining — but has not provided evidence that these cuts were caused by vandalism.
On Thursday, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington, said in a news briefing that prosecutors had “tremendous evidence” underpinning the indictment, and she condemned what she called “unchecked vandalism and civil disorder.”
“National Park Service employees observed Hearn actually forcefully and violently pulling up and removing the bottom liner with both hands,” she said. “According to witnesses, Hearn damaged approximately two square feet of sealant from the bottom of the pool.”
When a parks employee told him to stop, Ms. Pirro said, Mr. Hearn was “belligerent, rude and disrespectful.”
Norm Eisen and Mary Dohrmann, lawyers representing Mr. Hearn, said in a statement that he is innocent.
“These charges are outrageous and should be alarming to every American,” they said. “This indictment reflects the administration’s effort to shift blame for their own failures. On the eve of our nation’s Independence Day, Americans should be deeply concerned by the misuse of government power against an ordinary citizen.”
Mr. Hearn has acknowledged immersing his hand and touching the peeling sealant during a pause in a bike ride, but he has said that is all he did.
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“I didn’t remove anything,” Mr. Hearn said in an interview last month, adding that he had reached in and felt a loose flap of sealant, as he had seen some news reporters doing.
“I was just a curious, concerned citizen,” he said. “I guess I was there at the wrong place, wrong time.”
In recent days, White House officials have tried to paint Mr. Hearn as an extremist. In a statement last week, Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, called him a “deranged individual suffering from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
On Thursday, Ms. Pirro described the case in the context of Mr. Trump’s efforts to refurbish Washington, which she said was undergoing “a renaissance like it has never experienced before, in both safety and in beauty.”
In April, President Trump announced that he would be fixing “the once beautiful Reflecting Pool.”
The administration awarded no-bid contracts to resurface the pool and add a new water-filtration system at a cost of $16.4 million, but by mid-June — days before Mr. Hearn’s arrest — it was already clear that something was off.
Chunks of sealant, which had been recently applied to the concrete slabs, were spotted floating in the water. And the water was turning a lively shade of green, proof that the algae was still present.
After the president raised the specter of vandalism, security officers quickly surrounded the area, an eternal draw for tourists. Federal officials have said that seven people, including Mr. Hearn, have been arrested on charges of vandalism.
Ms. Pirro said Thursday that her office was reviewing those cases and that some would likely result in misdemeanor charges and others in even lesser violations.
Thursday’s indictment came at a fraught moment for Ms. Pirro’s office, which has encountered trouble filing — and sustaining — charges against Washington residents who have protested Mr. Trump’s anti-crime efforts and immigration policies.
Under Ms. Pirro, prosecutors failed three times last summer to secure an indictment against a woman accused of assaulting an F.B.I. agent during a protest, and ultimately lost at trial.
In a similar case, grand jurors initially rejected efforts to win a felony indictment against a man accused of hurling a submarine sandwich at a federal officer on the street. Prosecutors dropped the case to a misdemeanor, which does not require an indictment, but lost at trial.
Gregory Rosen, a former prosecutor in Ms. Pirro’s office, raised questions about Thursday’s charges, especially given legal precedents.
“Malicious destruction of property has never meant just touching things,” he said. “The court has consistently required either an actual intent to cause the harm or wanton conduct and damage resulting from an accident or curiosity doesn’t qualify.”
David A. Fahrenthold, Katie Rogers and Clarence Williams contributed reporting.