Austin Sarat
When things don’t go well for President Trump, his usual response is to search for someone or something to blame. Rigged elections, weaponized prosecutions, and the deep state are some of his favorite targets.
So when his plan to renovate Washington’s iconic Reflecting Pool turned into a fiasco, it was not surprising that he went back to a familiar playbook.
For more than a century, the pool has connected the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, but Trump concocted a scheme to drain it, paint its bottom “American flag blue,” and have it ready to go for the 250th anniversary celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The result: Soon after the company selected by Trump to do the work was finished, the paint began to peel, and, as The Guardian’s David Smith observed, “a massive algae bloom had turned the pool a green reminiscent of a plane passenger clutching a sick bag. It also stank….”
But, instead of investigating what went wrong, Trump quickly searched for a scapegoat.
Writing in 1979, the famous social theorist Rene Gerard said that scapegoating is a way of redirecting responsibility to a single “vulnerable target.” The logic scapegoating, Gerard notes, can be traced back to ancient religious traditions, which would sacrifice the scapegoat to satisfy an angry God.
In the case of the Reflecting Pool, Trump turned his anger into accusation.
“We had vandalism,” he said. “It’s not a lot of damage, but we’ll probably have to let the water out and re-fix it. They went in there with a knife. I was just told by the people over at Parks, five people are arrested, and five people are under investigation right now – and it’s a sad thing.”
His accusation seemed to bear fruit when, on July 2, Jean Pirro, his handpicked choice as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, announced, as the New York Times reported, “the indictment of the 67-year-old ex-Olympian David Hearn for trashing ‘sacred’ government property.” At the time, Pirro said, “This is not only a priority for the president, but for myself….We will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hearn willfully destroyed property.”
Hearns’ legal team contended that he had done nothing more than other tourists had done by reaching into the Reflecting Pool and touching a piece of bottom coating “that had already detached.” He “released it when asked to do so by a park employee and left the pool in no worse condition in which he found it.”
On July 16, they made a motion to dismiss the indictment in which they alleged that, among other things, the government “failed to preserve the key physical evidence in this case: the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, including the section of its liner that Mr. Heam is charged with damaging. Two weeks later, and less than a month after Pirro filed the initial charges, Hearn got what he asked for when she notified a federal district court of her plan to drop the indictment.
Her decision is the latest result in the ongoing battle between the Trump Administration and reality. It is also a reminder of the president’s incompetence and dangerous willingness to make wild accusations to suit his political needs.
Not surprisingly, the president was not pleased with Pirro. And he stuck to his original story.
“To me,” he stated, “it was a pure case of VANDALISM, that included the grass, which had a big 86 47 emblazoned in giant letters on it, and other elements of the surrounding area. There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS! “
The AP notes that “He also posted a nearly four-minute video that appears to have been taken from a security camera, in which three individuals can be seen with their hands in the pool, including one for an extended period. The president claimed the video shows ‘material is being cut with a knife or a box cutter, for all to see!’”
Trump concluded his Truth Social post by saying: “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool. I don’t know what she was thinking?”
The president could have found out what Pirro was thinking if he’d read what she told the court in her motion to dismiss the Hearn indictment. There, Pirro played her own version of the blame game.
She called out the Department of the Interior, led by Secretary Doug Burgum, in yet another sign of the administration’s dysfunctions. “Based upon the initial reports provided by the Department of the Interior (“DOI”) and the USS. Park Police (“USPP”),” Pirro told the court, “the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia (“USAO-DC’) presented the grand jury with evidence that damage to the Reflecting Pool was caused by vandals, including the defendant in this case, David Hearn.”
When she did so, Pirro argued, she “was not in possession of any information from D.O.I. indicating that any damage to the Reflecting Pool was caused by anything other than the actions of the defendant and other vandals who damaged the pool’s lining.”
“On July 17, 2026,” Pirro’s filing continued, “United States Attorney Pirro and senior USAO-DC employees once again visited the site and this time immediately noted extensive damage throughout the now-drained pool. It was at that time that USAO-DC first became aware of the significant damage throughout the pool and accordingly requested all documents from DOI concerning how the pool was lined and all records regarding the installation of the lining.”
Pirro adds, “it was not until after the return of the indictment, that the DOI provided additional documents to the USAO-DC indicating that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings (“AIC”), and the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026.”
And Pirro conceded that given the extent of the damage to pool, it would be “difficult to attribute” it to vandalism, “let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt.“
Finally, Pirro used the motion to dismiss the Hearn indictment to lay her failure to fulfill her legal obligation to provide exculpatory evidence to the defense at the feet of the Interior Department. As the New York Times argues, “Ms. Pirro’s filing is, in a sense, an effort to replace the case against Mr. Hearn in federal court with a case in the court of public opinion against Mr. Burgum; the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings; and Park Police officials.”
Whatever her motive, Pirro’s motion is an instance of reality taking its revenge. It belies Trump’s refusal to take responsibility for what happened at the Reflecting Pool, and in an administration where finger-pointing is a survival strategy, it seeks to replace one scapegoat with another.
It is bad enough when the president goes after his political enemies; it is even worse when he uses government power to target people like David Hearn, who have done nothing to him, and blames them nonetheless.
Americans deserve better than this. When they go to the polls in November, they should use their ballots to demand it.
Austin Sarat ScheerPost
Austin D. Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. He is an internationally renowned scholar whose interdisciplinary work examines law in relation to culture, violence, and the liberal arts. His academic foundation includes a B.A. from Providence College (1969), an M.A. (1970) and Ph.D. (1973) from the University of Wisconsin, and a J.D. from Yale Law School (1988). He has also received honorary degrees, including an LL.D. from Providence College (2008) and an A.M. from Amherst College (1984). Sarat has also been awarded the Jeffrey B. Ferguson Memorial Teaching Prize at Amherst in 2022 and the Ronald Pipkin Service Award as well as many others
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