Bulwark Takes - DOJ Admits Reflecting Pool Wasn’t Vandalized

Episode Date: August 1, 2026

Sonny Bunch and Bill Kristol take on the dismissed felony vandalism case against Olympic canoeist David Hearn—who was accused of damaging the Reflecting Pool—after government officials acknowledged problems with the work itself. They consider what the case reveals about political pressure, government misconduct, the costs of defending against unjust prosecutions, and Trump’s fixation on remaking Washington.

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Booster juice. Canadian born. Blending since 1999. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Bullwork Takes. I'm Sunny Bunch. I'm joined today by Bill Crystal. We're going to be talking about one of the.

the most one of the most outrageous things that has happened in the Trump administration, I think. Look, there's all sorts of corruption, petty and otherwise. And, you know, we can talk about demolishing the White House, et cetera. But this is a case where, Bill, the White House has taken, has used the force of law to try and persecute somebody for their own mistakes, for their own, for their own misdeeds, lied about it, lied about the person, lied about what happened, and, and use the power of the state against a guy, right? We're talking. of course about the reflecting pool. David Hearn, who is an Olympic canoeist, was arrested for vandalism, charged with felony vandalism because he was supposedly destroying the great beautiful sealant on the

reflecting pool that had turned it, you know, the lovely shade of blue that Trump wanted. And, you know, this case goes through the courts and then late Friday night, Friday night news dump, Jeannie Piro goes out there, it's like, oh, by the way, actually, it wasn't vandalism at all. The whole thing is has been botched from the start. It's actually the Department of Interior's fault. And we're not going to prosecute the guy. We want them to be set free. I find this all incredibly outrageous and frustrating, Bill.

But I think you are in an even darker place than me at this point. Well, just it shows how willing they all are to lie from Trump on down to the Secretary of the Interior, Doug Bergam, who was, for as one new before the administration, was a pretty standard issue Republican governor, but not a, you know, congenital liar. But people under Bergam. It's not like Doug Bergam personally did all the stuff, transmitted all the stuff from Interior to Justice. And it's not like Gene Piro was the only person in justice

to accept or pretend to accept what Interior did. They had FBI agents. Remember, park police out, out looking at the place, looking at the reflecting pool. So the degree to which the lie, the culture of lying, or the pressure to lie and exceeding to the pressure to lie, has just permeated through the Trump administration, and down the ranks, I find ominous.

In this case, it didn't work, and that's good. One other point I'll make just on the slightly more ominous side, though, was, I mean, he got off the unjustly accused innocent man. He got off partly because he got pro bono legal help from very good attorneys. I actually am on the board of the Democracy Defenders Fund, so I'm a little biased, but Norm Eisen, representative in court, also the Washington Litigation Group and other group that I've been slightly involved in helping get some funny two nonprofits.

profits. So they get to use taxpayer money to prosecute someone unjustly. And the opposition, if I can put it that way, has to raise money, which they did. But I mean, you know, from donors and stuff to fight back. And obviously it's an unequal. That's an unequal fight. And it means that you can win a bunch of them. And it's good that the good guys did in this case. But, you know, the 20th person who's prosecuted unjustly, not in Washington, D.C., and not at the reflecting pool, but in, you know, Omaha, Nebraska, for some little thing that got annoyed the Trump administration, can't get that level of legal assistance. So the whole thing is both, as you've said, I mean, really ridiculous and embarrassing and

humiliating, but also really a window into how an authoritarian administration works, I think. We should note that there are still some cases outstanding, right? There are, so this was the felony case against David Hearn. It has been dismissed, but there are still a handful of cases out there working their way through the system, right? I can't imagine those hold up at this point. Yeah, I doubt it. Yeah. I think it's five misdemeanor cases. I think this case, I don't fully understand this, was dismissed with predators or without prejudice. I remember which one is the way you say it. But they could bring the case again. I assume the judge isn't going to accept that and it's going to just relegate it to the as sheep of

history. But again, as you say, though, and, you know, again, other people look at this and think, well, this got dismissed, but I might not have this legal help. So maybe I won't get us, you know, I won't cross some aspect of the Trump administration that could get me arrested. As I say, I won't have this kind of high class, this publicity and high class legal ups. So I think one shouldn't underestimate just the intimidation effects, something like this could have. Hopefully it has the reverse effect of also embarrassing the Trump administration. But since they seem incapable of embarrassment, I'm dubious how much, and I'm serious about that. I mean, I was not a legal chain with a bunch of lawyers.

Well, this could deter them. This will really embarrass them. I don't believe that. I mean, I think they need to be stopped. They need to be, the funding needs to be caught. They need to be, you know, investigated. And they need to be congressional oversight, presumably the next Congress, at a very serious and aggressive kind.

But the idea that, you know, they're going to sort of, well, there's an obvious question. Is anyone in the Interior Department or the Justice Department going to pay a price for this? Are they going to be disciplined, do you think? No. No, no, of course not. Of course not.

It really is just reading through the documents, reading through the filing, looking at how this whole thing, you know, kind of came. together and then fell apart is is so telling about how shameless all of these uh all of these people are like first of all first of all let's just go back to the very beginning of this right how did this begin this began because the president decided to send a no-bid contract to a guy to do the the sealant on the pool he sent a no-bid contract to another guy who looked like a cartoon mobster remember remember the the guy who did the you know the filtration system this is a different guy but he was doing seal it did a bad job. They, they, you know, the president drove over it in his motorcade,

who knows if that broke it. It didn't seal. Started peeling up immediately. And, and, and folks at the interior knew about this. Like, it's not, it's not like it was, it was a hidden thing. They knew that there were problems from the beginning. They knew that there, that it was no good. But it was, but it, they just, I guess, lied to the DOJ. And this is, this is the thing that is, this is the thing that is so troubling to me, right? Is that you, you have one, part of the government. You have the Department of the Interior just straight up lying to the Department of Justice. Department of Justice goes out there and does an investigation. And eventually they get to the point where they dismiss it. But, you know, we've got clips of Jeannie Piro out there

talking about how guilty this guy is, how obviously we're going to have so much proof of they're out there. He's out there cutting up the thing. Can we play the video? I think folks need to see it. He caused damage. And that damage is over a thousand. dollars with an expert come to the trial you can we'll hear all that at the trial you can we will hear all that at the trial right now we believe it's his bare hands both hands does that indicate in your belief that it was probably damaged before or do you believe that he oh he damaged it further but do you believe it had already been damaged before he damaged the pool He damaged this pool.

Well, good. I'm glad you've got that Evans. Come on in the grand jury, you can testify. The smugness and just kind of vitriol is really striking, but she's just reflecting the president, right? Like, this is just a reflection of what he wanted. Absolutely. You know, I just struck watching the clip. I hadn't seen it in a while.

I don't know who the guy in the white uniform behind Pharaoh is. I assume maybe it's the park police, do you think? I don't know. It didn't look like it wasn't a DOJ attorney. It was someone who was more of a police. So that's another part of the government that's implicated. And I think there were other people. I haven't seen the broad shot, so to speak, but I don't think there was just one person standing behind her. She probably had other people from agencies that, quote, investigated this. I also would point out, we don't know. I mean, DOJ says that Interior misled them. We don't know that that's the case. I mean, we don't know. What if some deputy assistant secretary interior said to some deputy, some lawyer at DOJ, hey, you know, this is not great. I mean, this isn't really quite the way it happened.

And the guy said, well, okay, maybe I'll take that up the chain. Whoops, the chain, you know, I'm sorry, we don't want to hear that. I mean, that is the degree of corruption throughout is so great. And Piero then just asserting the guilt of someone based on evidence. When she says that, if you're an actual serious U.S. attorney, you have to know that that is true. You can't just be depending on obviously politically pressured representations if they were such representations. from the interior department. But you're right, the fish rots from the head down, and this is entirely the way Trump wants his executive branch to work. Yeah. And if we get, let's, let's watch Trump,

because I mean, it's really, again, it's very striking just watching him speak about this. Are the contractors who did the initial work with a reflecting pool, are they to blame for the current condition? Or is it? No, no, we have vandalism. You know, we have a hundred and we have a, I think 290, 300 foot slit right through it, probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind. Somebody went in with a knife and cut it. They cut it up good, and then they cut a 200, 350 foot slip in the form of lots of little slips. The reflecting pool is so beautiful. They tried to destroy it.

They cut it up with a box knife and tried to destroy it. But we caught them. They would cut it and they would grab this very expensive and very good material. totally waterproof. And they rip it. These people are sick. They ripped a scar, 350 feet long. Now, I can't help it if somebody goes in with a knife and starts hacking it up.

And we also have pictures of it. Can you release the photos? We've been asking for them. You'll see it in court. Bill, I just want you to think about the actual physical process of what he's discussing here, which I think at the time to everybody who was not in the tank for Donald Trump and MAGA, and we'll get to them in a second because this is the real scary thing, I think. The idea of somebody just like, all right, I'm going to go into the reflecting pool and I've got a

box cutter. I'm going to walk the length of a football field cutting behind. It boggles the mind. It boggles the mind that anybody could see that, hear him say this and think, oh, that sounds reasonable. Yeah, on the national wall, which is policed and which was already, the reflective pool already been in the news, so it's probably a little more policed. It's not like we're doing this.

It's not obscure, you know, park. that's empty at midnight, as they say, in Omaha, Nebraska, with all the respect to Omaha, Nebraska, right? I mean, this is like a, right in the mall in Washington, D.C. There's no shortcut for saving time, but saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at bellair direct.com. Yeah, ludicrous.

I mean, well, let me ask you this. You mentioned Magus, I assume this is where you're going, but I'll just ask it. I mean, you've studied MAGA quite a lot of follow it closely. What will happen? Will people pretend it, well, all the people who, took this seriously and echoed it and went on about the vandalism. Will they just be quiet? Will they some of them? Will they want to apologize? Will they learn a lesson from this?

Will they, where does this? What effect does this have? Will they learn a lesson from this? No, I don't think they'll learn a lesson. No, the, I think what had the response here, we've already seen it actually. We've already seen this play out slightly, which is that they'll say, oh, geez, trumped arrangements so much. Why are you so obsessed with the reflecting pool. Why do you care so much about the reflecting pool? Like, don't you, first of all, don't you want the reflecting pool to be beautiful? Why do you hate America? Why don't you want the capital of our country to look nice? But really, you're just so obsessed with it. It's kind of sad. It's a little bit scary, actually, how obsessed you are in your Trump

derangement with the reflecting pool. As if Donald Trump hadn't made this remaking of Washington, D.C., the centerpiece of his administration, you know, outside of the failed wars with Iran and all that, It's like, we're going to beautify. We're going to beautify. He had a poster at the resolute desk. Or is he still a resolute? He had a poster in the Oval Office where he's like, look at how tall the reflecting pool is. And he put it like it was a skyscraper.

He's like, we have to fix all of this. It's going to take a little bit of time. He is the one who is obsessed with this. And this failure, again, on multiple levels, the no-bid contract process, the lies from multiple branches of the government or multiple departments within the federal branch of the government, you know, it really is representative of everything that is wrong with him. And I will say, where I was going to go with this, Bill, is that the thing that is scariest about this to me is that you have, it's a real emperor's no close situation,

right? Where you have Donald Trump out there and his apparatchiks out there saying the most insanely, obviously ridiculous things about box cutters in the reflective. pool and it's vandalism that destroyed this. And all of the MAGA faithful are out there like, well, can you believe they would vandalize the reflecting pool like this? Can you believe that this would happen? And like I said, they'll try and pivot and shift, but nobody's ever going to be like, we were lied to. We relied to and we trusted them and we messed up. That's on us. Nobody will ever say that. They'll either ignore it or they'll spin it or they'll twist it. And that is how how bad the information ecosystem has gotten. And that's the thing I find actually scariest about all of this.

No, that's a good point. And the Trump administration won't change. I think it's the other side of it. I sometimes run these text chains with lawyers who work to DOJ and they can't quite believe what's happening. Well, maybe this will really cause a change in their ways. And it's not this will happen again and again and again. Unless they, you know, Congress can act so strongly that somehow they get deterred. The only way it won't happen is if they're deterred. They won't be any shame, as you said, or any embarrassment. I don't ask you one other question if we have a minute here. Because you're shrewd about these things. I'm sort of struck, and I don't think this is something that's been commented on much,

why is Trump so obsessed with Washington, with the beautifying of Washington, D.C.? I mean, it's not, if you're a MAGA type, A, he's not from Washington. He doesn't spend that much time here. I mean, he goes to Florida as much as he can. He goes to the New Jersey course. You know, he's not like he's a lover of Obama's like to go, you know, they actually lived here before. they live here afterwards.

They like going to restaurants. Trump's not strolling around D.C. enjoying the beauties of the city or the historical aspects of the city. And he's, I guess, sort of anti-D.C., presumably the swamp. So what's with the – I'm just struck how obsessed he is with, as you said, the pool, but also – I mean, some of it's obviously just pure, insane megalomania, the arch, but also the beautiful – the cleaning up, quote, damaging, making less attractive the statues. But I mean, the whole turning the Eisenhower office, the old executive office building, white and from the gray, I mean, one could be against a lot of

these things on aesthetic and other historical preservation grounds. But why is Trump doing this in the first place? What do you think? I do think that, you know, the thing we all have to remember about Donald Trump is that he is a, he fashions himself as a builder, right? Like, he thinks, I build things. I build skyscrapers. I build these beautiful buildings. I build these great apartments and I fill them with things that look nice. And you know what looks? He's like one of those birds that collect shiny objects, right? Like the things he thinks look nice are gold.

He like, I'm gold. I want gold. I want everything to be gold tinged. That's why, you know, I saw somebody joke that the West Wing now looks like a, like a, what is it, a Thai restaurant or a, like it just, it has this like really kind of ridiculous aesthetic now. just gold everywhere. But I do think that this is his, and the other thing is he likes to put his name on things. So, you know, he's going to build the Trump ballroom.

He's going to build, you know, the, he's going to fix all these things. And I do think that that is actually his favorite thing. It's his favorite thing to do. It's that and hit the tariff button. Like, if he can smash the tariff button and build a building, he'll be happier. I still, I've said this time and again, but I really feel like if we offered him some sort of plea deal, where he gets out of office and then he gets like an HG. TV show where he gets to remake Washington, D.C., you know, just going from place to place and,

you know, renovating and demolishing, he would be very happy with that. I don't know that we can make that work, but it would be, you know, it'd be great for this new Paramount Warner's, whatever, if that ever goes there. Wonderful TV show. Good idea. Yeah, we should promote that so far. That would be good. Only if he leaves office and if he can get fast leave off. And somehow, yeah. Yeah, sure. That would be, yeah, but he is obsessed with, I guess he thinks DC is, you know, it's the capital. It's Washington. It's got the famous people's monuments. He puts his own grand on it. But it is sort of, I think a lot of it is also the conceit that he knows what looks nice and the obsession with the gold. The White House, I mean, it is someone who had the privilege of

working there for a few years. I mean, it is unbelievable to see what he's done there. Yeah, it's unfair. We have a nice local Thai restaurant here in the suburbs of D.C. And it doesn't look nearly as bad as Trump's White House, I want to say. No, I do not mean to insult to any Thai, you know, great cuisine love love love tie um all right well well bill thanks for thanks for thanks for letting letting me rant about this because this is when i saw when i saw the friday night news dump that this guy was being that david heron was being you know set free i was just like this is actually outrageous this is one of the most outrageous abuses of power that we've seen again i understand i like there's the petty corruptions the the little venal stuff like skimming money

from your idiot followers for meme coins whatever like that's bad but it's it's this is using the power state to persecute a guy for something that you did and messed up on your own. And that's, that's dangerous and scary. And I, I really think we don't. We, we should appreciate what we are, what we are seeing here, which is, which is not great. Agreed. So, agreed. Well, thank you for taking the time on Saturday. I'm glad we did this. I think it is important, actually, as you say. And everybody, thanks for listening to Bullwork Takes, uh, watching us on YouTube. Make sure you hit the like and subscribe. Share this with your friends. I mean, again, this is an outrageous thing. People need to know about it. And I hope you have a nice weekend.

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