Former Olympian Charged with One Count of Felony Vandalism In Reflecting Pool Saga
INSIDE: Hegseth ... Eric and Don Jr. ... Laura Loomer
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
The Reflecting Pool Saga Gets Uglier
Federal prosecutors have obtained a one-count felony destruction of property indictment against David Hearn, the former Olympic canoeist who has been swept up in Trump’s very Trumpian pursuit of a scapegoat for his botched Reflecting Pool repairs. During a press conference announcing the charge yesterday, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro treated the case with a zeal that only a prosecutor who confuses their job with that of a Fox News host can muster, boasting that it could carry a ten-year prison term.
Hearn’s attorneys, Norm Eisen and Mary Dohrmann, called the charge “outrageous,” demonstrating “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.”
Hearn, who was detained for five hours last month over the incident, has said that he touched a flap of the sealant that had peeled away and was floating in the pool. But the Trump administration has refused to admit that the more than $16 million in no-bid contracts it awarded, in one case to a company owned by one of Trump’s friends, produced shoddy work that drew the attention of onlookers at the site as well as national ridicule. At yesterday’s presser, Pirro claimed to have witnesses who saw “a violent effort to rip up the sealant from the bottom of the pool,” which she believed was with “his bare hands, both hands.” But at the time that Hearn was at the Reflecting Pool, the floating, faulty sealant had already been observed and photographed by others. Pirro appears to have abandoned the claim, pushed by Trump, that a vandal had cut a 350-foot gash in the sealant. She claimed yesterday that Hearn had damaged “two square feet” of the pool’s liner.
Pirro likely did not endear herself to District of Columbia residents and prospective jurors, who have endured all the disruptions caused by Trump’s ambitions to remake the nation’s capital in his own image, subjecting them to the National Guard patrolling the streets while he bulldozes the White House East Wing and hosts absurdist events like his birthday UFC fights and the Great American State Fail — I mean Fair — on the National Mall. She cast Trump’s “beautification” of the city as a defense against “anarchy” and “civil disorder.”
Hegseth Really Working the Room
In that same vein, earlier in the day, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth visited a District of Columbia park to commemorate the work of National Guard troops he claimed have produced “the largest, fastest, steepest reduction in violent crime that has been achieved in any city anywhere in this country since the recording of crime data has existed.” (Needless to say, this is not true, despite the troops costing taxpayers approximately $1.5 million a day.) Reacting to protesters opposing the Guard’s presence in their city and the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant crackdowns, Hegseth called their chants “the sound of ingrates, of ingratitude, of people who are so blinded by ideology they can’t see law and order and common sense in front of them.”
Did Trump Pay Taxes on His Massive Crypto Haul?
Tax experts tell CBS News that Trump could potentially owe half a billion dollars in income tax from his cryptocurrency investments, but their ability to calculate the profit from his ventures is impossible “because of the lack of transparency around the corporate entities holding the income,” and because Trump doesn’t make his tax returns public. Would the White House provide a reporter the answer to this question? Of course not.
“Being president of the United States is by far the most lucrative business venture of Donald Trump’s checkered business career,” writes Timothy Noah at The New Republic. “Trump has turned the American presidency into an extractive industry.”
Trump’s Sons Are Reaping Huge Profits From the Wars He Promised Not To Start
MSNOW investigates how Eric and Donald Trump Jr.’s investments in defense firms are paying off. Earlier this year, they were the beneficiaries of a “reverse merger” between a golf course company of which they were then part owners and a drone company of which they are now part owners. Now, the Pentagon is placing orders from the drone company. And that’s just one of 10 companies in which the Trump sons have stakes, and which together have received over $3.7 billion in federal contracts since Trump returned to the presidency last year.
Trump Deploys More Federal Resources For Disproved “Rigged Election” Obsessions
The FBI is “surging” agents to Fulton County, Georgia, “an extraordinary effort by the nation’s most prominent law enforcement agency to find evidence supporting President Donald Trump’s darkest election fraud conspiracy theories,” MSNOW reports. Also yesterday, House Democrats warned Trump’s acting Director of National Intelligence, Bill Pulte, not to declassify intelligence on any election-related matters, after Trump said he told Pulte he could “declassify whatever you want.” Pulte’s predecessor, Tulsi Gabbard, notoriously attended the FBI’s January raid on Fulton County’s election offices, and Trump has said he tapped Pulte to investigate “rigged elections.”
Characteristically Weird and Twisted Trumpland Story
Influencer Laura Loomer has held up the appointment of a former DOGE operative, now at the State Department, to the White House National Security Council because the operative, Jeremy Lewin, has what Loomer considers to be an unacceptably liberal past. That seems, at first glance, to be the most important feature of this story, and, truth be told, Loomer’s ability to control administration personnel matters is certainly noteworthy. But what is probably more significant in this Politico report is that while at DOGE, Lewin “oversaw the gutting of USAID,” and in his current post at the State Department, as undersecretary of State for foreign assistance, humanitarian affairs and religious freedom, he is “assisting” with earthquake relief in Venezuela.
The Christian Right Has New Goal: Anti-Trans Laws in Blue States
Kristen Waggoner, president of the Alliance Defending Freedom, which successfully litigated the anti-trans sports ban case the Supreme Court decided this week, warned “blue states with boys on podiums” that “you’re next.”
Well-Oiled Machine
Federal prosecutors in Miami accidentally turned over a volume of former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on his investigations of Trump’s criminal activity, which is the subject of a gag order they assiduously sought from Trump’s favorite judge, Aileen Cannon. They inadvertently sent the document to a defendant in a separate criminal case: a former federal prosecutor charged with violating Cannon’s order by emailing herself a copy of the Smith report.
Babies Born in the Second Half of 2026 Will Get a Social Security Card Commemorating Freedom250
The Social Security Administration has announced that babies born between July 2 and December 31 this year, whose parents request a Social Security card for them, will receive a card embossed with the Freedom250 logo. Fox News describes it as a “once-in-a-generation keepsake tied to the nation’s 250th birthday.” It’s great, I suppose, for anyone wanting a memento of Trump’s massive corruption for their child.
Happy Fourth of July
Thanks for reading these past two weeks. Have a wonderful Fourth of July, and, especially if you’re in D.C., stay safe from the hazardous air pollution caused by 850,000 fireworks blasted into a heat dome. David will be back on Monday.
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Trump had "The Beast," which some say is akin to a tank, drive over the bottom of the reflecting pool AFTER the coating was applied. This is insanity.
Sarah, thank you for your research and for the tone of your reporting.
All good wishes for your continued work in the world.