Lawyers for a former Olympian who was cleared of charges of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool are asking internal government watchdogs to investigate the conduct of senior Justice and Interior Department officials, accusing prosecutors of indicting him despite knowing that a renovation of the pool was failing. In a letter sent on Tuesday to the inspectors general for those agencies, lawyers for the former athlete, David Hearn, say the agencies ignored their own evidence in a rush to satisfy President Trump’s desire for criminal charges.
Prosecutors then provided a court “blatantly false” information about when they became aware that the real culprit for the badly peeling liner in the pool was a botched renovation overseen by Mr. Trump, his lawyers wrote. Among the lawyers requesting the investigation is Michael R. Bromwich, a former inspector general at the Justice Department. Representatives for the inspectors general and the office of Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Mr. Hearn’s lawyers wrote that a June 30 damage assessment, which prosecutors received by July 1, “documented damage throughout the pool as early as June 8,” more than a week before Mr. Hearn visited the pool. Last week, a judge barred prosecutors from trying to revive the case against him, noting that the president had publicly demanded criminal charges be filed. The case against Mr. Hearn appeared flawed from the start, and collapsed within weeks of his indictment.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing