President Donald Trump is blaming sabotage on the failing $14.65 million renovation to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, posting on Truth Social that vandals cut a 250-foot gash into the pool's new blue liner and poured corrosive chemicals into the water.
But one man says he was arrested and detained for five hours after just touching the pool.
On Friday (June 19), Trump wrote that troublemakers had "done everything possible to hurt the inside surface that was just installed.” He claimed the algae fouling the water was "75% gone" and pledged repairs "early next week."
By Saturday, Trump escalated his account, posting that U.S. Park Police had arrested "multiple individuals" and alleging they had driven a blade through nearly a quarter-mile of liner and dumped destructive chemicals into the pool. He called the alleged acts "a true affront to both Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln" and warned those arrested face "years in jail."
David “Davey” Hearn, a three-time Olympian in canoe slalom, was given a misdemeanor charge of destruction of government property after he stopped at the pool following a 52-mile bike ride.
He told reporters that he saw a flap of the blue liner, already partially detached, and had reached into the water to feel it when officers surrounded him and put him in handcuffs.
"I didn't vandalize anything," Hearn said. "I didn't destroy, break, or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs."
Citing his background in material science, he added, "There's nothing about the Reflecting Pool that was in any different condition after I left there than it had before I went by there yesterday." He is scheduled to appear in D.C. Superior Court on July 9 and could face up to ten years in prison if convicted.
The renovation itself had been in trouble well before any arrests. The pool was completed on June 6 at a cost nearly seven times its original $1.8 million estimate; a Virginia-based contractor received the no-bid job, and a separate Ohio-based firm collected roughly $1.7 million for a nanobubble ozone system. Algae appeared within one day of the pool being refilled, turning the water green within days.
The pool is expected to be drained for repairs in the coming days, with the America 250 celebration on July 4 roughly two weeks away.
