Jeanine Pirro, the Fox News host-turned-U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, grew heated over her decision to prosecute a former Olympic canoeist for touching the president’s beloved Reflecting Pool last month.
David Hearn, 67, a three-time Olympic canoeist, was arrested on June 19 and charged with misdemeanor destruction of government property after he reached into the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to feel a flap of detached “American flag blue” liner.
On Thursday, CNN reported that Hearn was indicted by a grand jury in Washington, D.C., Superior Court. But when Pirro, 75, announced the indictment, a reporter’s question appeared to strike a nerve.
“How do you square charging this individual when there were over 1,000 Jan 6 rioters pardoned who caused millions of dollars in damages?” an off-camera reporter asked, when Pirro cut in to say that question itself was “a problem.”
“You really talking about January 6?” she asked, then added: “I’m not.”
“Okay. Who’s next?” she went on.
The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol is a particularly sensitive topic for Pirro. The former Fox News host went to great lengths to amplify Trump’s false stolen election claims that led up to the riot.
In fact, Pirro pushed Trump’s election conspiracy theories so aggressively on air that her own producer warned her to dial it back, according to court documents first reported by The Washington Post.
“You should be very careful with this stuff and protect yourself given the ongoing calls for evidence [about the election being stolen] that has not materialized,” producer Jerry Andrews wrote in a text message to Pirro.
Fox would go on to settle a defamation lawsuit with Dominion, the voting technology company falsely accused by Fox hosts of rigging the election, for a staggering $787.5 million in 2023.
Meanwhile, Hearn claimed he was locked up for five hours and held “incommunicado” after he dared to touch the peeling liner in Donald Trump’s algae-infested Reflecting Pool in June.
At Thursday’s indictment hearing, Hearn’s attorney said he had been left in the dark about the case because his client had received only a citation. The exact charges remain unknown. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia did not respond to a request for comment.
“I didn’t vandalize anything,” Hearn told The Washington Post last month after he was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of destruction of government property.
According to Hearn, he was on a 52-mile bike ride when he stopped to view the refurbished Reflecting Pool and, after noticing a piece of “American flag blue” liner detached from the bottom, reached in to see what it felt like.
“I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs,” he told The Post.
Trump’s decision to repaint the basin “American flag blue” ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary on July 4 appears to have been a $ 14 million waste of time, increasing heat absorption and triggering the worst algae bloom in years.
Rather than own the botched job, Trump, 80, has blamed shadowy “leftist” vandals, posting on Truth Social that “SICK, DERANGED PEOPLE” had sabotaged the pool. The U.S. Park Police and National Guard have since been deployed to patrol the National Mall.
