DOJ drops remaining Reflecting Pool charges despite Trump anger

The Justice Department dropped the last three Reflecting Pool charges, ending the case against Cameron Theirs, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Justin Carreno even after Donald Trump publicly attacked Jeanine Pirro over the decision. By the time the case was fully dismissed, all four people accused in the incident, including former Olympian David Hearn, were no longer facing charges.

Federal filings had already shifted the center of the case away from vandalism and toward a construction dispute tied to a $14 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Prosecutors said the visible damage was the result of a “botched” or “flawed” installation by the contractor, not deliberate vandalism. In earlier reporting, Hearn said he had only touched the water in the pool out of curiosity, while the government had accused him of ripping off a piece of sealant.

The Justice Department’s own legal position undercut the original criminal theory. In filings, prosecutors said it was “difficult to attribute” the damage to vandalism “beyond a reasonable doubt,” a standard that left little room to sustain the charges once the contractor error explanation took hold. That assessment followed the earlier move in July to dismiss the case against Hearn, who had been the most visible defendant in the dispute.

Trump, however, treated the dismissals as a sign of weakness from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. He criticized Pirro for agreeing to drop the case, saying she had “choked” or “made a mistake,” and insisted that the Reflecting Pool had been vandalized. The dispute turned a damage claim on the National Mall into a wider test of how far federal prosecutors should go when the evidence does not clear the criminal threshold.

The final dismissal closes a case that had become entangled with Trump’s own renovation claims and his public pressure on the Justice Department. What remained in the end was a straightforward legal conclusion: prosecutors no longer had a case strong enough to keep all four defendants charged.