Attorneys for Olympic canoeist David Hearn asked Justice and Interior inspectors general to investigate his arrest, felony indictment, and case dismissal, calling the treatment shocking and indefensible.
Lawyers for the Olympian sent a letter this week to DOJ Inspector General Don Berthiaume and DOI Inspector General Caryl Brzymialkiewicz seeking a full review of how the case was built and collapsed. CBS News reported seeing the letter, which frames Hearn’s experience as a failure of basic process inside both departments.
The request lands after a D.C. Superior Court judge dismissed the felony charge with prejudice on Oct. 1, blocking prosecutors from bringing it again. Hearn had faced up to 10 years in prison over an incident at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool that the government later tied to a contractor’s botched work, not vandalism.
His attorneys say the sequence left an innocent man detained, indicted, publicly labeled a criminal, and exposed to political heat long after the facts fell apart.
On June 19, Hearn stopped by the Reflecting Pool during a bike ride. He put his hand in the water and touched a piece of liner that had already come loose. A National Park Police officer told him to remove his hand.
Hearn was detained for five hours. His lawyers say he was not read Miranda rights and was not allowed a phone call. After release he found two misdemeanor citations in a brown paper bag.
On July 2 a grand jury in D.C. Superior Court indicted him on a felony count of destruction of government property. The leap from a brief stop at a public monument to a felony case set the tone for everything that followed.
Defense lawyers later argued the government fenced off the area and repaired the liner section at the heart of the charge despite a preservation request. That step, they said, complicated any fair review of the physical evidence.
By the end of July, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro moved to dismiss the case. She cited new information showing a contractor’s “botched installation,” not vandalism, caused the damage. She also pointed to delays by the Interior Department in producing materials that undercut the government’s evidence.
The dismissal did not end the pressure. After Pirro dropped the charge, she was seen carrying a large box into the White House. Sources later confirmed to CBS News that the box held case evidence she presented to President Trump after he lashed out at her for the dismissal. White House meetings with prosecutors explored whether other charges could still be brought.
That tension around the collapsed Reflecting Pool prosecution has already drawn wider notice, including coverage of how Trump rebuked his own D.C. prosecutor once the felony charge fell apart.
On Oct. 1 the Superior Court judge went further and dismissed the case with prejudice. The opinion made plain why a clean break was required.
"Should the Court dismiss this case in a fashion that allows the government to reinitiate prosecution in the future, the Court would be exposing him to the risk that, due to pressure from the President Of the United States apparently motivated at least in part by Mr. Hearn's political views, he would again be charged with a crime that prosecutors have determined he did not commit,"
The ruling closed the door on a second run at the same facts. Hearn’s lawyers now want the inspectors general to examine how the first run happened at all.
In the letter to the two inspectors general, Hearn’s attorneys describe a prosecution that moved too fast and rested on too little.
"Because of the actions of various DOJ and DOI employees, Mr. Hearn was deprived of his liberty, indicted for a crime he did not commit, threatened with incarceration of up to 10 years, and endured the defaming of his name and reputation by high-ranking government officials,"
They name Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and President Trump among the high-ranking officials they say damaged Hearn’s reputation. The lawyers also allege prosecutors already possessed exculpatory evidence before seeking the indictment.
"The record reflects an indictment obtained through unusual haste and a prosecution shaped from the outset by political pressure and built on an inadequate investigation,"
The letter calls the overall handling “shocking and indefensible” and urges a detailed review inside both agencies.
"The DOJ OIG and the DOI OIG must conduct detailed and comprehensive investigations to determine what happened inside their agencies that led to the shocking and indefensible treatment of Mr. Hearn,"
Anything short of that, the lawyers wrote, would betray the watchdogs’ mission and continue the mistreatment.
Separate reporting has tracked other flashpoints in Pirro’s tenure as U.S. attorney, including a moment when Trump weighed firing Jeanine Pirro after the Reflecting Pool case unraveled.
Hearn’s attorneys also accuse Pirro of personally approaching a defense expert witness in the field without notice to counsel. They say she was surrounded by her own staff, that defense lawyers were not present, and that the government never produced any report, note, or record of the exchange.
"A U.S. Attorney who personally interrogates a represented defendant's testifying expert, in the field, surrounded by her own staff and without notice to counsel, is not gathering evidence, she is testing how the defense intends to prove its case."
The letter further criticizes Pirro’s public comments after the indictment. Attorneys say she previewed expected witness testimony, vouched for government witnesses, opined on Hearn’s guilt, and labeled the alleged conduct “anarchy” and “criminal behavior.” They argue those remarks implicated trial-publicity and prosecutorial-conduct rules in the District of Columbia.
Pirro has drawn outside legal pushback in other settings as well, including when a left-wing legal group filed a bar complaint against Jeanine Pirro after a grand jury declined to indict Democratic lawmakers.
A Justice Department spokesperson responded to the letter by stressing the inspector general’s autonomy.
"The Office of the Inspector General operates independently and makes its own decisions about what to review."
No public reply from the Interior inspector general or from the named IGs themselves appears in the available reporting. The letter still puts both watchdogs on formal notice that Hearn’s team wants the arrest, the indictment, the expert contact, the public statements, and the post-dismissal White House contacts examined in full.
Pirro has continued other work in the office, including an effort in which Pirro stood up a new fraud division aimed at recovering stolen taxpayer dollars in Washington.
The core dispute remains narrower and more concrete: an Olympian touched an already-loose liner, spent five hours in custody, faced a felony carrying a decade of prison exposure, watched senior officials discuss his case at the highest levels, and finally received a with-prejudice dismissal after prosecutors themselves concluded he did not commit the crime charged.
High-profile attention on the U.S. attorney’s office has also included security concerns, such as the case of a Long Island man arrested for allegedly threatening to kill U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro.
Inspectors general exist for moments when a prosecution leaves a citizen stripped of liberty over facts the government later abandoned. Hearn’s lawyers have now asked those offices to do the job.
