In recent weeks, as Donald Trump’s renovation project at the Reflecting Pool became an embarrassing fiasco, the president settled on a curious strategy to deflect blame. He contended “vandals” had secretly attacked the pool, and it was their intervention, rather than his incompetence, that ruined the Republican’s triumph.

In the days that followed, the president and his administration made a variety of claims about these alleged criminals, whose existence was in doubt, though one name was confirmed: David Hearn, who represented the United States in three Olympics as a canoeist, acknowledged that he’d received a citation.

Hearn recently told MS NOW’s Chris Hayes that he’d touched a piece of peeling blue paint toward the end of a bike ride.

“I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong, so I had no reason to think I was going to be arrested … and kind of before I knew it, I was being handcuffed,” Hearn said, adding that he made no effort to tear the pool’s coating.

His lawyer, Norm Eisen, soon after told The New York Times, “It is not a crime in America to touch water.”

Evidently, Trump’s Justice Department came to a different conclusion. On Thursday afternoon, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, whose recent prosecutorial track record has been as embarrassing as it has been political, announced that Hearn has been charged with one felony count of destruction of property in D.C. Superior Court.

According to the former Fox News host, who said at a press conference that she would not discuss any details about collected evidence, Hearn engaged in a “violent effort” and “willfully destroyed” public property with his bare hands. Pirro added that the defendant, if convicted, faces up to 10 years in prison.

Of course, securing an indictment through a grand jury process is one thing; securing a conviction in the nation’s capital against an Olympian who touched the Reflecting Pool is something else entirely.

During the press conference, MS NOW’s Adam Hudacek asked the prosecutor how she squares charging an alleged pool vandal after Trump’s Justice Department pardoned Jan. 6 rioters who caused millions of dollars in damage at the U.S. Capitol. Pirro refused to answer.

Eisen, the defendant’s lawyer, added in a written statement, “Davey Hearn is innocent. These charges are outrageous and should be alarming to every American. This indictment reflects the administration’s effort to shift blame for their own failures. On the eve of our nation’s Independence Day, Americans should be deeply concerned by the misuse of government power against an ordinary citizen based on a concocted narrative. The justice system exists to determine facts, not to provide political cover.”

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