Donald Trump said Monday that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is now 70% filled with water and “looking good,” then warned that anyone who damages it will go to jail. He also said security cameras have been installed, putting a fresh threat on a dispute that has already led to a dropped criminal case.
The statement arrived in a new Truth Social post and pushed the Reflecting Pool fight back into view for anyone following the case over its damaged liner. Trump paired his warning with a video and a claim that the pool has been restored enough to keep a close watch on it, using the post to cast the issue as both a cleanup effort and a law-and-order warning.
That matters because the damage Trump is talking about has already been through the courts. Jeanine Pirro brought the only criminal case in July, accusing David Hearn, 67, of forcefully and violently ripping out the liner. Within weeks, prosecutors dropped the charges. Later, D.C. Superior Court Judge Todd Edelman blocked any second try and threw the case out for good earlier this month.
Trump has not accepted that outcome. He has insisted the earlier damage was real, attacked the Justice Department’s explanation as the ridiculous writings of some Radical Left person in the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, and demanded that Pirro revisit what he called her hastily made decision. Federal prosecutors, however, told the court the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism, and the Interior Department later reached the same conclusion after saying it had provided less than fulsome information at the outset.
That is the friction running through the latest post: Trump says vandals are the problem and cameras are now watching, while the official record says the liner failed because the installation went wrong. He repeated the claim that the pool has not worked properly since it was built in 1922 and said it always leaked, but the unresolved question is narrower now. If the pool is truly under watch, how any future complaint would be handled after a judge has already shut the door on the earlier case is the piece that still matters.
