We shouldn’t know who David Hearn is. The 67-year-old placed ninth in a whitewater canoeing race at the 1996 Olympics: a distant finish in the near-distant past that underscores the point that, in 2026, he should be blissfully anonymous.
But in a move that violates the legitimate expectation that our government will not wrongly scapegoat its people, the Trump administration slimed Hearn’s name. In June, the Justice Department made the outrageous claim that Hearn had vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington and charged him with a felony count of destruction of property, which brings a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said Friday that her office was dropping the case against Hearn after documents from the Interior Department made clear that he didn’t vandalize the pool, but rather that a contractor on the project did poor work.
But this is not a “no harm, no foul” situation — because unwarranted attention from the federal government is harm in and of itself.
This is a preview of a column by Jarvis DeBerry. Read the full column here. |
