The U.S. Olympian wrongly accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is now warning his compatriots to “be vigilant” during President Donald Trump’s reign.
David Hearn sounded the alarm to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, telling her there is a real reason to fear unjust targeting by the Trump administration after his ordinary bike ride turned into an arrest, a federal charge, and him becoming MAGA’s No. 1 enemy this summer.
“If it can happen to me, it could happen to anybody,” he said. “Nobody’s immune to this kind of government lawlessness, essentially, and it’s really the kind of thing that you think [occurs only in] a country ruled by a dictator,” he said. “That’s where you see that kind of thing.”
He added, “This isn’t the land of the free and the home of the brave that I know.”
Trump’s hand-picked D.C. prosecutor, Jeanine Pirro, said last week that she was dismissing a destruction of property charge against the 67-year-old Hearn in a news conference that drew the ire of the White House.
Despite Trump’s repeated claims that Hearn vandalized the pool and caused it to turn green and fill with slime, Pirro said her prosecutors determined that a botched renovation, which cost the American taxpayer $14 million, was the cause of the significant algae bloom.
Hearn told Collins that he was barely able to sleep since his arrest on June 19. If convicted on the charge brought against him, he was staring down a federal prison sentence that could have been as long as 10 years.
Now, Hearn says he is sleeping better, but is still shaken up by the ordeal. While his charge has already been dismissed, his legal team is still pushing for it to be dismissed with prejudice to prevent the possibility of a future Trump-friendly prosecutor bringing charges against him again.
Hearn said he remains concerned that the Trump administration will target others who are innocent to fuel the president’s personal obsessions.
“This whole thing has been really surreal and absurd,” he said. “I think a lot of people feel that way. Again, it’s a relief, but there’s an attachment to that relief of extreme concern for other people and for our country.”
Despite the dismissal, Trump has still pushed for the prosecution of Hearn—still claiming that he personally vandalized the reflecting pool’s lining, while Hearn says he was simply riding by on his bike—and others that he claims are behind his reflecting pool humiliation.
In an extraordinary tirade on Monday, Trump said that Pirro folded “like an umbrella” in throwing out the case against Hearn.
“I was disappointed with Jeanine Pirro,” Trump said. “Really disappointed with Jeanine Pirro. Instead of going after the people that did it, the judge went after her and went after her department, and I guess she choked. I don’t know what the hell happened.”
Hearn said Americans who are not in step with Trump need to be on extra alert.
“It’s really a different time in the United States of America right now,” he said. “We all need to be vigilant in this climate.”
