Rep. Ted Lieu accused Interior Secretary Doug Burgum of lying about the cause of damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, pointing to a Justice Department court filing that undercuts the administration’s monthslong narrative blaming vandals for the pool’s failure.
“Dear @SecretaryBurgum: You are lying when it comes to Olympian David Hearn,” Lieu wrote on X. “The court filing from Trump’s own Justice Dept proves it. The DOJ admitted the Reflecting Pool failed because of shoddy contracting work. This calls into question how much of what you said are lies.”
Lieu was responding to a post from Burgum defending the administration’s handling of the case. “The evidence is clear, vandals have repeatedly caused damage to the Reflecting Pool,” Burgum wrote. “Some of these acts were even caught on camera. We also provided the U.S. Attorney’s office expert and eyewitness testimony to the damage done by vandals and provided every piece of evidence they asked for in the requested time line detailing each area of damage at the pool. The Reflecting Pool is part of the Lincoln Memorial and dates back to 1922. President Trump cares deeply about protecting our sacred national monuments and his leadership has led the restoration of our Nation’s Capital by Making D.C. Safe and Beautiful Again. Intentional damage done to the Reflecting Pool is no different than defacing any one of our other national monuments. We won’t back down to deranged people who want to destroy, deface, or degrade our monuments.”
The dispute centers on David Hearn, a 67-year-old three-time Olympic canoeist from Bethesda, Maryland, who was arrested June 19 near the Reflecting Pool during a renovation the Trump administration had rushed to complete ahead of Independence Day events marking the country’s 250th anniversary. Hearn said he stopped during a bike ride, noticed the pool’s newly installed blue liner peeling, and touched a partially detached section out of curiosity, denying he tore, ripped or removed anything. “I didn’t vandalize anything,” Hearn told The Washington Post. “I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.”
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro announced a felony indictment against Hearn on July 2, charging him with destruction of property under D.C. Code § 22-303, a charge carrying up to 10 years in prison. “National Park employees observed Hearn actually forcefully and violently pulling up and removing the bottom liner with both hands,” Pirro said at the time, according to a Justice Department press release announcing the indictment. “After months of renovations ordered by President Trump to prepare our capital for America’s 250th anniversary, including the restoration of more than 50 parks, 48 monuments, and 22 fountains, these deliberate acts of destruction set back real progress and violate the law.” Hearn pleaded not guilty July 9, with a trial that had been scheduled for Sept. 28.
Federal prosecutors reversed course on July 31, filing a 20-page motion to dismiss the case. The filing said newly provided documents from the Interior Department showed the pool’s widespread damage stemmed from “a botched installation by the contractor” and “the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration,” rather than from vandalism. Prosecutors said a visual inspection had found damage throughout the pool, including in the middle, “where prosecutors say a vandal would not likely have attempted to peel the lining.” The filing stated, “It was not until after these documents were produced that [prosecutors] first became aware of information showing that the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism as initially represented” by the Interior Department, and that “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.”
Hearn’s attorneys, Norm Eisen, Mary Dohrmann and Steve Levin, said the dismissal did not fully resolve the matter. “Its dismissal today does not erase the abuse of government power in arresting and charging a patriotic American who did nothing wrong,” they said, according to ESPN. “The government’s approach was ready, fire, aim. The administration owes Mr. Hearn” an apology, they added, calling the initial charges “outrageous.”
The renovation itself cost an estimated $13 million to $16 million and involved contractor Atlantic Industrial Coatings installing a new waterproof liner. Shortly after completion, the liner began peeling and delaminating across large sections of the pool, and algae blooms quickly returned, turning the water green again. The administration, including Trump and Burgum, had repeatedly attributed the damage primarily to vandalism, at times citing gashes in the lining they said totaled hundreds of feet and were caused by sharp objects.
Trump publicly disagreed with the Justice Department’s decision to drop the Hearn case even after the filing, continuing to emphasize vandalism, including damage to surrounding grass, while acknowledging “there may have been some contractor difficulty.”
Pirro’s office said it was separately handling roughly six other cases involving alleged vandalism at the Reflecting Pool, ranging from misdemeanors to lesser violations, and that those cases remained under review independent of the Hearn dismissal.
Lieu, a member of the House Foreign Affairs and Judiciary committees, has separately criticized administration transparency on issues including Iran war casualty reporting and Pentagon munitions stockpiles in recent weeks.
Neither Burgum nor the Interior Department has issued a further public response specifically addressing Lieu’s accusation.