Sen. John Kennedy has admitted that President Donald Trump’s push to prosecute vandals for damage to his newly renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool may have been a political ploy.
“This is a case that the DOJ said was open and shut. They could prove it without reasonable doubt,” host Kristen Welker said on Meet the Press Sunday, after charges against former Olympian David Hearn were dropped.
With the Trump administration now conceding a “botched” repair job, Kennedy, 74, admitted: “Well, the whole thing is a multiple vehicle pileup.”
He then said of Trump’s vandalism conspiracy: “Let me start with the president. The president says it was caused by vandals. I don’t know whether he really believes that or it’s part of his political messaging or he’s just thinking out loud.”
Kennedy said of his boss: “You and I both know the president well. He exists loudly and he grows anxious when he has an unexpressed thought.
“I’m not saying he doesn’t really believe it, I just don’t know.”
The attorney offered a similar assessment on Jeanine Pirro, who had initially backed Trump’s assertion that vandals were to blame for the Reflecting Pool fiasco before backtracking on Friday.
“The stakes are a lot higher for U.S. Attorney Pirro. You can’t lie to a federal judge,” he said. “If she can’t prove her case, she was right to pull back. Because if you fool around with a federal judge, you will find out.”
In classic Kennedy form, the senator used a bizarre anecdote to illustrate his point.
“When I was in private practice one time, I put my briefcase on a brand new conference table bought by a federal judge,” he said. “And he got so mad, I’ll never forget, I thought I was going to get to spend overnight with bubba in central lockup.”
Getting back to the matter at hand, Kennedy mused: “Federal judges will not tolerate—and so if—I don’t know why she filed a suit without doing a full investigation.
“She says she relied on the Department of the Interior, but she was smart to pull it back.”
Before being discharged pre-trial, Hearn could have faced up to a decade behind bars for his alleged tampering with the pool.
In a Friday court filing, however, Trump’s Department of Justice said new information from the DOI suggested that “damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor” alongside “the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026.”
On Saturday, Trump admitted the possibility of some “contractor difficulty,” but stood by his claims that vandals were behind the bulk of the damage.
