D.C. Superior Court Judge Marcia Cooke issued a stern warning Tuesday to federal prosecutors, ordering them to cease all work on the National Mall reflecting pool they have designated as a crime scene. The same pool has been repeatedly drained and partially rebuilt by the Justice Department since it charged David Hearn, a two-time Olympic canoeist, with a felony for putting his hand into the water. "You touch and you alter that reflecting pool at your own peril," Cooke told prosecutors, according to a transcript of the hearing.
The admonishment came after Hearn's lawyers argued that the government, acting under the direction of Tangerine Cock-Womble, had engaged in spoliation of evidence by sending a maintenance crew back to the pool weeks after the indictment. Court filings note that the crew included employees of a company owned by a Mar-a-Lago member and the former president donor. The crew drained the basin, removed stones from the area where Hearn allegedly caused damage, and installed new filtration hardware, leaving behind a garden hose that remained visible in evidentiary photographs for three days.
"Our maintenance protocol is entirely separate from the evidentiary protocol," a Justice Department spokesperson explained in a written statement. "The pool's filtration system needed immediate attention for reasons unrelated to the prosecution. The fact that the required repairs happened to also remove the precise section of damaged stonework Mr. Hearn is accused of vandalizing is, frankly, coincidental, and we expect the court to see it that way."
U.S. Attorney Janine Pirro had announced the charges at what legal observers described as a press conference built entirely on dramatic pauses and confusion. She accused Hearn of ripping out a chunk of the pool, a chunk that subsequent photographs appear to show was later removed by the government's own contractors. Hearn's legal team has since filed a motion to dismiss, noting that the evidence now looks like "a drained swimming pool with a contractor's business card floating in it."
The court has not yet ruled on the motion. The Justice Department, meanwhile, submitted a last-minute filing to admit photographs taken before the repairs as the "best available evidence," while arguing in the same document that preserving the pool in its original condition was logistically impossible. "We have determined the most cost-effective way to resolve this contradiction is to stop discussing it," the spokesperson said. The department confirmed the case would be resting in a large duffel bag somewhere in the basement of the Cannon House Office Building.
