WASHINGTON — A judge in the nation’s capital has set a trial date in September for a former Olympic canoe racer charged with deliberately damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the site of a troubled multimillion-dollar renovation project championed by President Donald Trump.
D.C. Superior Court Judge Todd Edelman scheduled the Sept. 28 trial date for David Hearn during a hearing on Monday. It was Hearn’s second court appearance since a grand jury indicted him on a felony count of property destruction.
Hearn, who pleaded not guilty to the charge on July 9, has asked the court to dismiss the case. In a court filing, his attorneys argued the government has failed to properly preserve important physical evidence from the Reflecting Pool.
At least three other people have been charged in the same court with misdemeanors for allegedly removing pieces of paint from the Reflecting Pool. The felony charge against Hearn, which accuses him of causing at least $1,000 in damage to the pool, carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years upon conviction.
Trump ordered the pool’s renovation work ahead of the country’s 250th independence celebrations, but the project has been plagued by problems. Trump initially suggested that pool renovations would cost $1.5 million, but the cost of the project has exceeded $16 million.
Trump, a Republican, has claimed that vandals have damaged the pool, but administration critics attribute the problems to shoddy repair work. Hearn and his supporters claim his prosecution is a politically motivated attempt by the Trump administration to deflect blame and scapegoat him and others for their own failures.
Workers recently drained the pool again, prompting Hearn’s attorneys to argue that the government was destroying evidence of his innocence.
“The Constitution simply does not permit the government to charge a man with destroying an object, retain exclusive custody of that object, and then drain, disturb, and alter the object before the defense may examine it, despite a written demand for its preservation. And yet that is what has happened here,” they wrote in their dismissal request.
Hearn, 67, previously told The Associated Press that he was detained by National Guard troops and U.S. Park Police for five hours after stopping by the pool during a bike ride on June 19. He said that he reached in to examine the pool’s newly peeled coating and briefly touched a chunk attached to the side of the pool but that he obeyed a park worker who told him to let go of it.
Hearn, who’s from Bethesda, Maryland, competed in three Summer Olympics, earning his best finish, ninth, at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee says on its website.
