Deadline: Legal Blog
The Trump Justice Department sought a temporary dismissal. Hearn wanted his charges tossed for good.
The Justice Department’s indictment against former Olympic canoeist David Hearn is dismissed permanently, a judge in the nation’s capital ruled Thursday in a defeat for the Trump administration.
Issuing that permanent relief, Superior Court Judge Todd Edelman cited the “extraordinary possibility” that Hearn could otherwise “face a meritless, politically motivated prosecution” from this DOJ.
District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, an ally of President Donald Trump, had touted Hearn’s charges at a press conference in July, only to move to drop the case later that month. Pirro’s office said the initial allegation that Hearn criminally vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was marred by prosecutors’ subsequent discovery that the damage was due to a botched installation.
Edelman granted the dismissal request in August. But he left unanswered the question of whether it would be “without prejudice” (as the DOJ requested) or “with prejudice” (as Hearn requested). The former would leave open the possibility of reviving the case in the future, while the latter would not.
Hearn’s lawyers argued that his indictment was “motivated by political considerations and devoid of adequate factual support” from the very start, and that a permanent dismissal is needed to prevent the risk of “harassment and bad faith” by the government.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
