President Donald Trump publicly challenged his own U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro Saturday after she dismissed vandalism charges against an Olympic canoeist accused of damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Pirro, a former Fox News host and noted Trump ally, filed a motion Friday to drop the second-degree felony indictment against three-time Olympian David Hearn — but Trump fired back hours later, declaring “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro.”
The extraordinary public split pits the president against his handpicked appointee over the iconic pool’s condition.
“There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!”
Trump wrote on Truth Social that the vandalism included grass graffiti reading “86 47” — a phrase many Trump supporters interpret as a threat to assassinate the president. In service-industry slang, “86” means kicking out a customer. Trump is the 47th president.
Hearn, 67, was arrested in June by U.S. Park Police after officers spotted him inspecting the pool’s peeling lining. At a July 2 press conference announcing the indictment, Pirro declared Hearn “willfully destroyed property” and “ripped a piece of recently installed sealant.”
But in her Friday motion to dismiss, Pirro reversed course entirely.
She wrote that the pool’s extreme disrepair was not caused by vandalism — as the Department of the Interior (DOI) claimed — but was instead “the result of a botched installation” rushed to completion in time for the country’s 250th birthday on July 4.
“Based upon the initial reports provided by the [DOI] and the [USPP], the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia presented the grand jury with evidence that damage to the Reflecting Pool was caused by vandals, including the defendant in this case, David Hearn,” Pirro wrote in the filing.
The U.S. attorney said it wasn’t until after Hearn’s indictment that DOI provided additional documents showing the party responsible for the pool’s damage was Atlantic Industrial Coatings (AIC), the contractor handling its renovation.
Pirro concluded AIC went about the repairs in a “flawed” manner.
“Because these recently-produced materials significantly undermine the evidentiary basis for the indictment initially supplied by the DOI and [USPP], the USAO-DC respectfully moves to dismiss the indictment without prejudice,” her motion concludes.
Trump, however, pushed back on Truth Social hours later.
“I don’t know what she was thinking?” the president wrote. “To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM, that included the grass, which had a big 86 47 emblazoned in giant letters on it, and other elements of the surrounding area.”
The numerical phrase was found graffitied on the Reflecting Pool in May and marking a section of the nearby National Mall’s grass the following month.
Trump and his DOI Secretary Doug Burgum have long maintained that alleged vandals were responsible for the pool’s new “American flag blue” paint job peeling in sheets. The pool has simultaneously turned green due to an immense algae bloom — a phenomenon which has caused pro-algae protestors to flock to its side.
Burgum’s DOI had doled out a $6.9 million no-bid contract to AIC in April, The New York Times reported. The contract was awarded without fielding competing offers — a process the federal government usually pursues in cases of emergency or extreme urgency.
White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told the outlet at the time that the pool’s remodeling was “being completed at ‘Trump speed'” to ensure it was ready for July 4.
Hearn, a Washington-area native and member of the U.S. canoe slalom team during the 1992, 1996, and 2000 Summer Olympics, has maintained his innocence following his arrest and indictment.
Shortly after his arrest by the USPP, the canoeist told The Washington Post in June he had been taking a long bicycle ride when he stopped at the pool to look at a sheet he claimed was “already peeling” from its bottom.
“I reached in there, and I was able to grab the end of that flapping piece,” he told the outlet. “It was still attached to the bottom. I didn’t remove anything. I didn’t vandalize anything. I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything.”
The White House referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to Trump’s Truth Social post when asked for comment. Neither Pirro’s office, the DOI, nor Hearn’s attorney immediately responded to requests for comment.
