Let me tell you something. When the liner in my above-ground pool started peeling back in 2019, you know what I did? I called the company that installed it and demanded they fix it. You know what I didn’t do? I didn’t call the police on the neighbor kid who picked up a flaking piece of it floating near the skimmer.
But I’m just a mom with common sense. The President of the United States has a different playbook.
Donald Trump’s administration spent $15 million on a no-bid contract to paint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool a special “American flag blue.” The liner started peeling almost immediately. So naturally, the federal government arrested a 67-year-old former Olympic canoeist named David Hearn for picking up a piece of it off the ground. Charged him with a felony. Ten years in prison. For touching pool trash.
Shealeah Craighead (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsI have questions.
The Justice Department arrested Hearn in June. But here’s the part that should make every parent in this country sit up straight: the Interior Department knew the liner was failing a full week before they had him hauled in. They wrote to the contractors about the peeling. They just forgot to mention that little detail to the prosecutors until after the man had already been indicted. A damage assessment submitted as evidence showed the liner was coming apart before Hearn ever showed up.
The DOJ eventually had to admit in court that the damage was “the result of a botched installation and not vandalism.” Their own filing said the new information “significantly undermined” the indictment. A federal judge dismissed the whole thing.
Case closed, right? A man was wrongly accused, the government fessed up, everybody moves on?
David Howard (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Wikimedia CommonsNot in this America. Trump spent the weekend rage-posting on Truth Social, sharing court documents claiming a “highly credible witness” saw Hearn “violently” rip the pool lining. The White House is now pressing federal prosecutors to open another case against him, according to The Wall Street Journal. The man’s lawyers called it “outrageous” and said they’re reviewing legal remedies for continued harassment.
Let me make sure I have this straight. The government’s own experts said the installation was botched. The government’s own filing admitted they had no case. The government’s own judge threw it out. And the president’s response is to demand they charge him again?
Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter Tuesday to D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum asking whether they “maliciously prosecuted an American citizen they knew to be innocent.” He wants to know if Interior “deliberately misled prosecutors to cover up a botched renovation.” He’s demanding documents, grand jury evidence, and communications with the White House.
Raskin said it plainly: “At a minimum, it appears that members of the Trump Administration were ready and willing to imprison an innocent American for a decade in a desperate effort to soothe an ex-landlord’s wounded ego about a terrible paint job and wasteful contract.”
Christian Brown (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsBurgum, for his part, is still insisting vandals did it. Pirro met with Trump at the White House last week, and nobody knows if she still has a job.
Here’s what I know as a mother. When your kid breaks something and tries to blame the neighbor, you don’t arrest the neighbor twice. You sit your kid down and you say, “We don’t do that in this house.” But nobody in this administration has that kind of parenting, do they?
They spent $15 million on paint that wouldn’t stick, arrested a senior citizen to cover for it, got caught, and now want to do it all over again. And they think you’re too dumb to notice.