The White House has asked the Department of Justice (DoJ) to weigh new charges against a former Olympian accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, according to a person familiar with the matter, pushing to revive a case Donald Trump has fumed about ever since an ally dropped the case citing insufficient evidence.
Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, dropped the charges against the man, David Hearn, on ۳۱ July, blaming a contractor for a flawed installation. In a ۲۰-page filing dismissing the charges, Pirro’s office said it had received evidence that damage to the pool occurred before Hearn visited it, and that “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 has maintained that he reached in the water to touch a piece of already detached lining while he was on bike ride in June.
Trump has publicly rebuked Pirro for the decision and said she “choked”.
The White House made the request to officials at Main Justice – the department’s Washington DC headquarters. It was unclear what the basis for filing new charges against the man, David Hearn, would be. The request was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The justice department did not directly respond when asked whether it was considering filing new charges. “The Department of Justice follows the evidence when determining if crimes have been committed. We always evaluate any case based on the facts and the law,” a spokesperson said in an email.
The request from the White House to the justice department is itself extraordinary and underscores how Trump has moved to take control of the department and use it for his own ends. Traditionally, the justice department operates at an arms length from the White House to maintain impartiality and avoid the appearance of political interference.
The White House also did not directly address whether it asked justice department to file new charges. A spokesperson referred a request for comment to the justice department and sent links to two recent Trump posts on Truth Social calling for Pirro to reconsider her decision and suggesting there was evidence against Hearn.
Lawyers representing Hearn said a request from the White House would be a “another bizarre turn”.
“If true, it would mark a shocking first: a case that the DoJ lost by its own admission because it lacked the evidence to convict returning from the dead. This would add another bizarre turn to a sad chapter in the DOJ’s history and further harass an innocent man,” the lawyers, Norm Eisen, Mary Dohrmann and Steve Levin, said in a statement.
Attorney general Todd Blanche, recently confirmed to his job by the Senate, praised Pirro but equivocated when asked about the decision to dismiss the case last week.
“I don’t approve or disapprove decisions that our US attorneys make in a general matter, but I’m not going to talk about what we knew about the case or didn’t know about the case,” he said. “Hypothetically, if the president chose to fire a United States attorney, it turns out he’s allowed to do that because he’s the president of the United States.”
