{"id":45171,"date":"2026-08-14T21:13:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T16:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=45171"},"modified":"2026-08-14T21:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T16:13:08","slug":"david-hearn-files-new-motion-urging-court-to-stop-prosecutorial-harassment-by-trump-doj-in-reflecting-pool-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=45171","title":{"rendered":"David Hearn Files New Motion Urging Court to Stop \u2018Prosecutorial Harassment\u2019 by Trump DOJ in Reflecting Pool Case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_5743014\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5743014\" class=\"wp-image-5743014 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/am13.mediaite.com\/med\/cnt\/uploads\/2026\/07\/AP26196720030483.jpg\" alt=\"Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-5743014\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rahmat Gul\/AP Photo<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Former Olympic canoeist <strong>David Hearn<\/strong> called the Department of Justices&#8217; accusations that he vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool &#8220;prosecutorial harassment&#8221; and is pushing in court to block further legal action against him.<\/p>\n<p>Hearn, 67, was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/media\/news\/former-olympian-charged-with-vandalism-after-he-said-he-checked-out-the-peeling-blue-bottom-of-the-reflecting-pool\/\">charged<\/a> in June with a felony for destruction of government property filed by U.S. Attorney&#8217;s Office for the District of Columbia, headed by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/media\/tv\/heres-how-fox-news-covered-trump-bashing-former-host-jeanine-pirro\/\"><strong>Jeanine Pirro<\/strong><\/a>. He was facing up to 10 years in prison until prosecutors moved late last month to <a href=\"https:\/\/s3.documentcloud.org\/documents\/28528068\/justice-department-motion-to-dismiss-case-against-former-olympian-david-hearn.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">dismiss the case.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>On Friday, Hearn&#8217;s attorney <strong>Norm Eisen<\/strong> announced they had filed a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/08\/14\/us\/hearn-reflecting-pool-prosecutor-harassment.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">new motion<\/a> highlighting President <strong>Donald Trump&#8217;s<\/strong> continued attacks on Hearn and urged the court to dismiss the case with prejudice, meaning the DOJ would be barred from further attempts to prosecute the Olympian.<\/p>\n<p>Eisen, with the nonprofit Democracy Defenders Fund, has furiously <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/crime\/outrageous-david-hearns-attorney-furiously-blasts-report-white-house-wants-to-charge-him-again\/\">denounced<\/a> the targeting of Hearn as an &#8220;OUTRAGEOUS&#8221; attempt to &#8220;harass an innocent man.&#8221; Eisen is joined on the legal team by <strong>Mary Dohrmann<\/strong> with the Washington Litigation Group and<strong> Steve Levin <\/strong>from Steptoe LLC.<\/p>\n<div class=\"embed_container\" id=\"3d99eec8c5ffcabefc539084977198b1\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">BREAKING: the case against Davey Hearn was dismissed, but the new false Trump attacks on him further prove why our request to dismiss W\/ PREJUDICE is needed. That way the charges can never be brought back. New filing by <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/DDFund_?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@DDFund_<\/a> WLG &amp; Steptoe explains<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s.w.org\/images\/core\/emoji\/17.0.2\/72x72\/1f447.png\" alt=\"\ud83d\udc47\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em;max-height: 1em\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/3mqgGytMaM\">https:\/\/t.co\/3mqgGytMaM<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/NormEisen\/status\/2088259923670941790?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 14, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p>In the latest motion, Hearn&#8217;s defense attorneys excoriated the Trump administration for &#8220;continu[ing] to advance the narrative \u2014 contrary to the evidence and the filings of record in this case \u2014 that Mr. Hearn vandalized the Reflecting Pool.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThose public statements, together with reports that the Department of Justice is considering bringing new charges against Mr. Hearn, confirm that the risk of continued prosecutorial harassment is not speculative,&#8221; they added. \u201cThe record in this case demonstrates a substantial and specific risk that, if the indictment is dismissed without prejudice, Mr. Hearn will face renewed charges, however meritless, driven by political pressure rather than the evidence.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The prosecution <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/07\/31\/us\/politics\/david-hearn-reflecting-pool-vandalism-charges.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">admitted<\/a> it had relied on claims from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/media\/news\/doug-burgum-fires-back-on-reflecting-pool-case-we-wont-back-down\/\">Department of the Interior<\/a> that \u201cthe damage was caused entirely by vandals, including [Hearn],\u201d but after the indictment, DOI then \u201cprovided additional documents\u201d that revealed \u201cthe damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism as initially represented by DOI.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, Trump has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/media\/news\/trump-rages-over-wwii-memorial-vandalism-first-the-reflecting-pool-now-this\/\">continued to rage<\/a> about the dismissal, publicly lambasting Pirro, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/opinion\/trump-is-literally-claiming-theres-video-from-the-reflecting-pool-of-someone-cutting-it-with-a-box-knife-even-after-doj-gave-up\/\">falsely claiming<\/a> there is \u201cvideo\u201d evidence of the vandalism being committed, and pushing the DOJ to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/crime\/just-in-trump-white-house-asks-doj-to-consider-new-charges-in-reflecting-pool-case-it-dropped\/\">try to charge Hearn again<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>After the initial DOJ filing dismissing the case, Judge <strong>Todd Edelman<\/strong> of the District of Columbia Superior Court cancelled the trial that had been scheduled for late September and set a hearing on the issue of whether or not the dismissal should be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/crime\/david-hearn-files-motion-to-permanently-block-reflecting-pool-charges-as-trump-rants-about-case\/\">with prejudice<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Several other people were arrested and charged with misdemeanor-level offenses for accusations they too had vandalized the Reflecting Pool.<\/p>\n<p>Pirro&#8217;s office <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/crime\/trump-doj-drops-charges-against-three-more-defendants-accused-of-reflecting-pool-vandalism-but-one-lost-his-job\/\">dismissed those cases<\/a> as well earlier this month, but in the meantime, at least one of those defendants had lost his job and had to move out of his home because he could no longer afford the rent.<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/crime\/david-hearn-files-new-motion-urging-court-to-stop-prosecutorial-harassment-by-trump-doj-in-reflecting-pool-case\/\">David Hearn Files New Motion Urging Court to Stop \u2018Prosecutorial Harassment\u2019 by Trump DOJ in Reflecting Pool Case<\/a> first appeared on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\">Mediaite<\/a>.<\/p>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rahmat Gul\/AP Photo Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn called the Department of Justices&#8217; accusations that he vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool &#8220;prosecutorial harassment&#8221; and is pushing in court to block further legal action against him. Hearn, 67, was charged in June with a felony for destruction of government property filed by U.S. Attorney&#8217;s Office&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/am13.mediaite.com\/med\/cnt\/uploads\/2026\/07\/AP26196720030483.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsweek-trending"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}