US Olympian canoeist pleads not guilty to charges of damaging Reflecting Pool

WASHINGTON — The former U.S Olympian charged with damaging a section of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool pleaded not guilty during a brief court hearing Thursday and was released on his own recognizance. 

D.C. Superior Court Associate Judge Carmen Guerricagoitia McLean, who is presiding over the felony case against David C. Hearn, scheduled a status hearing for Aug. 5. McLean was nominated by President Barack Obama and, when that nomination expired, by President Donald Trump.

Mary L. Doorman, senior counsel at the Washington Litigation Group and a member of Hearn’s legal team, said during the arraignment hearing that he is an “upstanding citizen and member of the community” and three-time Olympian canoeist who regularly represents the United States in international competitions. 

Doorman said it would be a “waste of the court’s resources to impose any conditions” on Hearn ahead of a future trial. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Reddington said prosecutors have “a lot of evidence” in the case and that he wanted the status hearing to be scheduled before a trial. He later said the government wants to “quickly” share its evidence with Hearn’s legal team as part of the required discovery process. 

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro charged Hearn, of Bethesda, Maryland, with destruction of property of more than $1,000 for allegedly vandalizing the newly refinished Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on June 19. Trump, who has closely overseen the multi-million-dollar renovation of the Reflecting Pool, has blamed vandals for damage to it.

During a brief press conference outside the D.C. Superior Court Building after the hearing, Norm Eisen, co-founder and executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund and a member of Hearn’s legal team, said “every America should be alarmed about this prosecution.”

“This indictment reflects the administration’s effort to scapegoat Davey and to shift blame for their own failures,” Eisen said. 

Federal prosecutors, he said, should never have charged Hearn. 

“It is not a crime to touch the Reflecting Pool, to touch water in the United States of America,” Eisen said. 

Maryland Democratic U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, in whose congressional district Hearn resides, wrote in a statement released during the hearing that “Hearn would never desecrate a federal building or landmark by writing his name on it or affixing his name illegally to it or engaging in any other kind of political graffiti, vandalism or delinquency.”

“I hope—and will do everything I can to guarantee—that Davey gets true due process and a fair trial on these absurdly trumped-up charges,” Raskin added. “It is only a matter of time before an impartial judge and jury recognize that this case has been built on a Kafkaesque arrest and Orwellian charges.”