Federal prosecutors dropped their vandalism case against former Olympic canoeist David Hearn on Friday, August 3, 2026. The case involved damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool's new $14 million lining.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C., filed a 20-page request to dismiss the case, and the judge agreed.

Prosecutors also dropped charges against three other people who faced minor charges over the same damage, according to NPR, which confirmed the news through lawyers and court filings.

The prosecutors said new evidence from the Department of the Interior made it too hard to prove that someone intentionally vandalized the pool. Instead, they said the damage came from a poorly done installation by a contractor picked by President Trump.

The Department of Justice said it did not learn that the damage was caused by a bad installation until after the case had already started, according to NBC News.

D.C.'s top federal prosecutor, Jeanine Pirro, said the Interior Department only released the key evidence recently, after the grand jury had already met and after her office asked for it dozens of times.

Pirro said Interior Department documents showed the contractor rushed the job to finish before July 4, 2026, when events for the America 250 celebration were planned. She said rain, wind, and delays in getting the sealing product led to sloppy installation work that was not fixed before the pool was refilled in early June 2026.

Within days of the refilling, algae turned the water green.

Hearn, a 67-year-old Maryland resident, was the only person charged by a grand jury in the case. He pleaded not guilty to one count of destroying property worth more than $1,000. He said he just touched a loose piece of the lining out of curiosity.

Pirro had earlier repeated the vandalism claims against Hearn but then changed her position in her Friday court filing, according to the New York Times.

The case showed a conflict between two federal agencies: the prosecutor's office and the Interior Department. Pirro's office got a grand jury to charge Hearn before receiving the evidence that now shows the damage came from installation problems, not vandalism.

The broader context here is that this raises questions about what evidence was shown to the grand jury and whether the Interior Department shared what it knew soon enough. The Justice Department itself said the evidence pointing away from vandalism only came out after charges were filed.

Pirro's statement that the Interior Department released the evidence 'after the grand jury proceedings and following dozens of requests' suggests the two agencies argued over documents for a long time during the case.

Pirro, who publicly supported the vandalism story before changing direction in a 20-page court filing, pointed the blame at both the contractor and the Interior Department's handling of evidence.

The dismissal ends the criminal side of the Reflecting Pool case. The tension between the two agencies over who is responsible for the project's failures is still on record in the court files.