Aug. 7 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Friday urged U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro to reinstall charges against several people accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Pirro, a long-time Trump ally, has been in hot water with the president since admitting last week that damage to the pool was due to a “botched installation and not vandalism.”
On Friday, Trump said Pirro should “re-visit her hastily made decision.”
“Now that people are able to see it up close, they are reporting pure VANDALISM at The Reflecting Pool,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
A D.C. judge on Thursday dismissed the case against the most prominent of the defendants, Olympian David Hearn, 67, who faced 10 years in prison on a felony charge.
Defense attorneys have requested the dismissal of misdemeanor charges against three other people accused of vandalism.
Hearn and the other defendants were indicted on accusations that they purposefully ripped up pieces of the recently-installed blue sealant from the pool’s bottom.
But in court filings, Pirro’s office said she had been misled by the Interior Department into believing they had caused “nearly all of the damage” to the pool.
“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool,” Trump posted on Truth Social the following day. “I don’t know what she was thinking?”
Renovating the reflecting pool cost the government nearly $15 million in a no-bid contract.
In court filings, Pirro said the “botched” renovation “was the result of a flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, and the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration.”
“Davey Hearn is innocent and today’s dismissal reflects that simple fact,” the Olympian’s lawyers said in a statement on Thursday.
“But this case never should’ve been brought in the first place,” they added. “The Department of Justice’s decision to seek an indictment was a miscarriage of justice.”
US President Donald Trump has threatened to fire US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro, after she said the government would not press ahead with criminal charges of vandalism of Washington’s Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool against former Olympic athlete David Hearn.
The reflecting pool project is one of several changes to the landscape of Washington, DC that Trump has pursued during his second term in office.
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But following a multimillion-dollar refurbishment ahead of the 250th anniversary of US independence this year, parts of the lining of the pool were seen floating on the surface, and algae turned the water from blue to green, which Trump claimed was caused by vandalism.
Hearn, 67, was among a number of people arrested for suspected criminal damage to the “American flag blue” lining of the pool.
Pirro, however, acknowledged last week that the pool’s peeling sealant appeared to be the result of a “botched installation”, putting her at odds with the US president.
On Monday, Trump sharply criticised Pirro, who he had appointed as attorney for the District of Columbia in May last year, saying she had “choked” under pressure from a judge and “folded like an umbrella”.
Pirro met the president on Monday as he pondered firing her, but sources familiar with the matter told US broadcaster CNN late on Monday that Trump held back from firing his long-term ally.
Who is Pirro, and why has the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool become a flashpoint in her relations with Trump?
Here’s what we know:
Why was Hearn arrested for vandalism?
David Hearn, who said he only visited the reflecting pool to find out what the fuss was about, was among at least seven people arrested or cited over alleged damage to the pool.
He says he had put his hand into the water to examine a piece of lining which had started peeling away on June 19. But he was accused of pulling the lining away, causing more than $1,000 in damage. He was charged with destruction of government property, an offence that carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years.
His indictment was announced at a news conference held by Pirro on July 2. The prosecutor accused Hearn, an Olympic canoeist, of “forcefully and violently” ripping the newly installed liner of the reflecting pool, part of a renovation project Trump had championed.
She described his actions as “an affront to the dignity of our shared history” and warned that Hearn could face up to 10 years in prison for the destruction of government property.
Then, this week, the charges were dropped when Pirro announced the damage had most likely been caused by faulty installation of the lining.
The pool has since been drained.
Who is Pirro?
Born to Lebanese-American parents in June 1951 in Elmira, New York, Pirro is currently the US attorney for the District of Columbia. She was hand-picked by Trump in May last year for an interim period, and her position in the Senate was confirmed in August 2025.
According to the US government, Pirro has worked in the legal field for several decades, having started as an assistant district attorney for Westchester County, New York, in 1975 and later working as the first female judge in the Westchester County Court from 1990 to 1993.
She also became the first woman elected to serve as Westchester County district attorney for three consecutive terms from 1994 to 2005 and was the first female president of the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York.
Pirro also played a key role in starting the first domestic violence unit in a prosecutor’s office in the US and has authored eight books.
Besides politics, Pirro has also appeared on television in the US true crime series The Jinx, which aired in 2015, as well as hosting the reality show You the Jury, which aired in 2017.
What has Trump said about Pirro?
When Trump hand-picked Pirro as the attorney for the District of Columbia, he said he was confident she would improve Washington, DC.
“Jeanine Pirro, I have no doubt will be an exceptional US attorney for the District of Columbia, one of the truly most important positions in our country of any position, where she will restore public safety in our nation’s capital, break up vicious street gangs and criminal networks, and ensure equal justice under the law. You’ll see very, very big improvements in the DC area, that I can promise you,” Trump said when he appointed her on May 8, 2025.
Pirro, a Trump ally, vowed to tackle violence in the city and said DC would “again become a shining city on the hill in an America that President Trump has promised to make great again and will make safe again”.
But now, relations with Trump have frayed after Pirro refused to support the US president’s claim that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool had been vandalised.
In a motion filed on Friday afternoon, Pirro acknowledged that the accusations levelled against Hearn did not appear to be substantiated.
“The damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism, as initially represented by [the Department of the Interior],” Pirro wrote.
Pirro emphasised she had not received the “new information” until after the criminal indictment against Hearn had been returned. She blamed, in part, the “barebones police reports” her office had received.
“It was not until after the return of the indictment, that the DOI [US Department of the Interior] provided additional documents to the [US Attorney’s Office for Washington, DC] indicating that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor,” Pirro wrote.
She added that the pressure to finish the reflecting pool renovation project before the Independence Day holiday – marking the 250th anniversary of the US – contributed to the renovation’s failure. Trump had planned several events for the occasion.
“The rush to complete the project led to hasty and botched work that was not remediated before the project was finished and the fencing removed,” Pirro explained, citing delayed installation work, inclement weather and repeated testing failures.
Rain falls on the now-drained Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC, the US on August 2, 2026 [Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters]
Why is Trump so angry with Pirro?
Trump has aggressively pushed claims that the algae and tears to the lining in the reflecting pool are the result of vandalism.
“We caught some people vandalising our beautiful reflecting pool,” Trump said at a news conference in June. “They took a cutter, a box cutter, or something very sharp. Can you imagine? Where do these people come up with this? And they threw a little fertiliser in the water.”
Separately, he suggested those responsible should face “years in jail” for their alleged crimes.
After Pirro’s announcement, Trump said she should have continued pursuing the case.
“Pirro made a mistake. It was vandalism,” Trump said, adding he was “really disappointed” in Pirro and that “she folded like an umbrella”.
According to US media reports, he has also considered firing Pirro over the reflecting pool saga.
In a post on his Truth Social Platform on Saturday, Trump said: “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the reflecting pool. I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM.”
Trump and Pirro spoke by phone on Saturday, according to CNN. Sources familiar with the call said their conversation “wasn’t pretty”.
Following an in-person meeting with Pirro on Monday, sources told CNN that Trump had held back from firing her.
Neither the White House nor Pirro’s office has commented.
Chipped paint and algae are visible in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, after recent renovations following a directive from US President Donald Trump to paint it blue ahead of the 250th anniversary of US independence, in Washington, DC, the US, on June 21, 2026 [File: Aaron Schwartz/Reuters]
What happened to the reflecting pool?
The 618-metre (2,028-foot) Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has served as the backdrop for many iconic moments in US history, including the 1963 March on Washington, when civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.
It sits between the Washington Monument, a large obelisk, and the Lincoln Memorial, two popular tourist sites mere blocks from the White House. But the pool had long struggled with leaks along its granite edge and concrete bottom.
In April, Trump abruptly announced he would address the problem by relining the reflecting pool with swimming pool coating in the colour of the “American Flag Blue”.
The Trump administration granted a $13.1m contract to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a company the president claimed to have worked with as a real estate developer, and which is led by one of his donors. The deal was struck without taking competitive bids, as is standard, on the basis that the renovation was necessary immediately.
By early June, Trump had announced the project was complete. But within days, a thick layer of green algae had appeared on the surface of the pool, and the blue coating appeared cracked, with sheets of paint flapping in the water.
On June 11, a National Park Service engineer observed that the reflecting pool’s new lining had begun to peel, Pirro said in her announcement.
Citing the engineer’s report, Pirro wrote that the damage to the pool appeared to have been caused by “over spraying and delamination”.
WASHINGTON — President Trump said Monday that U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro “choked” and “folded like an umbrella” in moving to drop charges against a former Olympian accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Speaking at an unrelated Oval Office event, Trump ducked questions about whether he’d fire Pirro, a former Fox News host and longtime ally he handpicked as top federal prosecutor in the nation’s capital.
But the president kept up his drumbeat of sharp criticism, saying he remained disappointed by her assessment that damage to the Reflecting Pool was the result of shoddy construction, not vandalism.
“Frankly, I think she choked because the judge was really vicious. Instead of going after the people that did it, the judge went after her and went after her department, and I guess she choked,” Trump said in response to a reporter’s question after he signed an executive order for military spouses. “I don’t know what the hell happened.”
The move to dismiss charges against David Hearn was an embarrassing setback for the Justice Department and marked a rare moment during Trump’s second term of an aide or political appointee openly defying him.
After initially posting on social media over the weekend, “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro,” Trump was still fuming two days later, insisting for several minutes that vandalism had marred the troubled project.
“I was disappointed with Jeanine Pirro, really disappointed,” the president said Monday. “She folded like an umbrella.”
Pirro has not commented publicly since Trump’s initial social media post criticizing her.
Hearn has said he was on a bike ride June 19 when he reached in to examine the pool’s newly peeled coating and briefly touched a chunk attached to the side of the pool. But he said he obeyed a park worker who told him to let go of it.
The president also used the opportunity Monday to distance himself from the troubled project, which he had touted as part of his overarching efforts to spruce up the nation’s capital.
Trump said in April that he had consulted with a trio of firms that had worked on swimming pools at his properties and that the one he picked for the Reflecting Pool project had done work at his golf course in Northern Virginia. That firm was Virginia-based Atlantic Industrial Coatings, which was awarded a $14.7 million no-bid contract to repaint and waterproof its concrete floor.
“I have a guy who’s unbelievable at doing swimming pools,” Trump said then. “He looked at it. He called me up. He said, ‘Sir, we can do something on it.’”
But Trump insisted Monday that “I didn’t know the contractor” and for the first time hinted that he wasn’t pleased by the work that was done to get the Reflecting Pool ready in time for Independence Day celebrations.
“I’m not saying I was 100% thrilled with the contractor, but the contractor was rushing. We wanted to get it open for July 4th,” he said.
Crews drained the Reflecting Pool weeks ago to launch a new round of repairs. The White House hasn’t said when those might be finished or how much more they will cost, but the Trump administration did not seek new bids from other companies on the new round of repair work.
Trump also said Monday that the Reflecting Pool would be “fixed” and reopened in the next week and a half to two weeks — without providing further details.
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Saturday sharply criticized U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro’s assessment that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was the result of shoddy construction and not the work of vandals, as he claims.
Pirro’s office, in a court filing Friday, moved to drop criminal charges against a former Olympian, David Hearn, who had been accused of deliberately damaging the pool after it went through a renovation ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday celebration last month.
Trump, in a posting on social media, acknowledged that there “may have been some contractor difficulty” in the installation of a new pool liner. But he continues to insist, without evidence, that “the major damage was caused by VANDALS!”
“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool,” Trump added in his post.
The dismissal was a striking reversal for a Justice Department that had previously echoed Trump’s claims and billed the prosecution as pursuing accountability for damage at a Washington landmark, a pet project of Trump. Despite Pirro’s conclusion that there was no evidence of vandalism resulting in widespread damage, the president continued to allege Saturday that most of the damage to the pool was caused by vandals.
Government lawyers in their 20-page court filing Friday said that additional documents provided by the Interior Department since the indictment of Hearn show that the damage was the result of a botched installation by a contractor as well as “the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026.”
In addition, a recent visual inspection revealed damage throughout the pool, including in the middle — where prosecutors say a vandal would not likely have attempted to peel the lining.
Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist, was accused of pulling up a two-foot-square piece of the pool’s lining.
“Given all of this newly discovered information, it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt,” Pirro, a Trump appointee and former Fox News host, said in her filing asking a judge to formally dismiss the case.
In the filing, Pirro also blamed the Interior Department for providing “less than fulsome information at the outset of the case.”
The filing added that had “DOI been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment.” It was a jarring turn in position from Pirro, who claimed the government’s case was built on “tremendous evidence” when she announced the indictment against Hearn last month.
Hearn’s legal team on Saturday criticized both Trump and Pirro and said it was weighing “legal remedies” on behalf of their client.
“Trump is mad at Pirro because she finally admitted what we made clear in our legal filings all along: Trump’s botched renovation was responsible for the damage — not Davey Hearn,” the legal team said in a statement. “However, her claim that she and her office were previously duped by Interior is nonsense. Starting immediately after the arraignment, our motions repeatedly proved that the administration was to blame for the Reflecting Pool failures, not Davey.”
Trump on Saturday also posted a nearly four-minute video that appears to have been taken from a security camera, in which three individuals can be seen with their hands in the pool, including one for an extended period.
The president claimed the video shows “material is being cut with a knife or a box cutter, for all to see!”
It’s not clear from the video, which appears to be shot from some distance, that any vandalism occurred. Workers can also be seen standing nearby and don’t appear to notice the people sticking their hands into the water.
In May, Trump announced plans to beautify the Reflecting Pool this spring. Virginia-based Atlantic Industrial Coatings was awarded a $14.7-million, no-bid contract to repaint and waterproof the pool’s concrete floor.
Atlantic Industrial Coatings did not respond to requests for comment.
Water was drained and Trump directed that the bottom be painted with what he called “American flag blue.”
But problems emerged within days of the project’s completion, with chunks of the new liner peeling off.
The work on the Reflecting Pool is just one of a number of projects Trump has spearheaded across the nation’s capital. Most prominently, he demolished the White House’s East Wing to build a $400-million ballroom and plans to build a towering arch between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.
