President Donald Trump’s crusade against the purported Reflecting Pool vandals has been hit with a humiliating roadblock.
The office of Jeanine Pirro, the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, has dropped charges against three other individuals previously accused of destroying the president’s pet renovation project in Washington, D.C.
Prosecutors have dropped misdemeanor charges against Justin Carreno, Sophie Dennison-Gibby, and Cameron Thiers, according to their lawyers and court filings.
The three individuals, along with David Hearn, were painted as “vandals” by Trump over a supposed slit in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
News about the scrapping of a felony vandalism charge against Hearn, a 67-year-old Olympic canoeist, sent Trump into a meltdown over the weekend. Hearn was the only person indicted by a grand jury in the Reflecting Pool saga.
“Anyone who’s read the pleading that was filed in Mr. Hearn’s case would understand exactly why they would have to dismiss against the remainder of those charged,” Thiers’ attorney G. Allen Dale told NPR.
Dennison-Gibby’s attorney Jamison Koehler similarly told CBS News that his client “was arrested for a crime any rational person knows she did not commit.”
“We were all at the pool, there’s no slashes,” Benowitz said, adding that the government “literally fabricated a crime.”
“This was the epitome of the politicization of the criminal justice system,” he continued. “It’s just the sort of gut-wrenching reality of it. The guy just goes down to the Reflecting Pool and walks out with a misdemeanor and is fired from his job.”
The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump has repeatedly insisted that vandals cut a slit of up to 350 feet—later amended to 300 yards—into the Reflecting Pool. On several occasions, he accused unknown “sick” and “terrible” culprits of using a knife, a box cutter, and a razor.
But prosecutors said the Interior Department failed to fully and accurately disclose information showing that contractor errors, not vandalism, were responsible for the damage that earned Trump’s wrath.
“Given all of this newly discovered information, it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism,” Pirro wrote in her motion to the court in Hearn’s case.
The move sent Trump into a tailspin that continued into Monday.
“Frankly, I think she choked because the judge was really vicious. Instead of going after the people that did it, the judge went after her and went after her department, and I guess she choked,” Trump told reporters. “I don’t know what the hell happened.”
On Saturday, Trump also wrote in a Truth Social post that he disagreed “100%” with Pirro.
“I don’t know what she was thinking?” he said. “There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!”
Pirro hosted Justice With Judge Jeanine on Fox News from 2011 to 2022 before becoming a co-host of The Five. She remained on The Five until May 2025 when Trump named her the interim United States attorney for the District of Columbia. She was confirmed in the role later that month.
She joins a host of other Fox personalities who Trump has hand-picked for roles, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
