WASHINGTON — Lawyers for a former Olympian who was cleared of charges of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool are asking internal government watchdogs to investigate the conduct of senior Justice and Interior Department officials, accusing prosecutors of indicting him despite knowing that a renovation of the pool was failing.

In a letter sent Tuesday to the inspectors general for those agencies, lawyers for the former athlete, David Hearn, say the agencies ignored their own evidence in a rush to satisfy President Donald Trump’s desire for criminal charges. Prosecutors then provided a court “blatantly false” information about when they became aware that the real culprit for the badly peeling liner in the pool was a botched renovation overseen by Trump, his lawyers wrote.

“Because of the actions of various DOJ and DOI employees, Mr. Hearn was deprived of his liberty, indicted for a crime he did not commit, threatened with incarceration of up to 10 years and endured the defaming of his name and reputation by high-ranking government officials,” Hearn’s lawyers wrote. Among the lawyers requesting the investigation is Michael Bromwich, a former inspector general at the Justice Department.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department inspector general declined to comment. Representatives for the Interior Department inspector general and the office of Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Pirro has defended her decision to pursue the prosecution and blamed the Interior Department for not providing relevant evidence in time. But the letter from Hearn’s lawyers says that her office knew at least a day before it took the case to a grand jury that the pool liner had been failing for weeks.

“In its motion to dismiss, the government claims it first learned of the liner’s pervasive failures during a defense expert’s inspection on July 17, 2026,” Hearn’s lawyers wrote. “This is blatantly false and is directly refuted by the government’s own file.”

Hearn’s lawyers wrote that a June 30 damage assessment, which prosecutors received by July 1, “documented damage throughout the pool as early as June 8,” more than a week before Hearn visited the pool. Prosecutors gave that document to Hearn’s lawyers on July 10, “a week before the date on which it now claims to have first learned of these liner issues,” the letter says.

Last week, a judge barred prosecutors from trying to revive the case against him. Typically, prosecutors would be allowed to reinvestigate a criminal matter if they found new evidence. In this case, however, the judge noted that the president had publicly demanded criminal charges be filed. Without an explicit court order, the judge concluded, Justice Department lawyers could cave to political pressure from the White House and refile meritless charges.

The case against Hearn appeared flawed from the start, and collapsed within weeks of his indictment. He had stopped by the Reflecting Pool on June 19 and reached into the pool, where pieces of the liner had already been coming apart, just days after its installation.

According to court papers, National Guard troops grabbed Hearn and brought him to the U.S. Park Police, who arrested him. He was accused of tearing up a section of the pool liner. Hearn has said he touched a piece of the liner that was already torn but did not tear it.

Pirro dropped the indictment weeks after filing it, based on what she said was new evidence about the flaws in the application of the pool liner, a decision that enraged the president.

“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool,” Trump posted on social media.

And despite evidence to the contrary, the president has shown no sign of backing away from his claims of vandals since.

“We had vandalism there,” he told reporters Tuesday, adding, “Only sick people do that.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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