CNN
By Devan Cole, CNN
(CNN) — A judge on Thursday officially tossed out a case the Justice Department brought against former Olympian David Hearn, whom they had accused of feloniously vandalizing the Reflecting Pool earlier this summer.
Judge Todd Edelman stopped short of barring prosecutors in Washington, DC, from being able to revive the same case against Hearn in the future, as his attorneys had asked. The judge asked for more arguments over that request before he made a decision on it.
The formal dismissal comes nearly a week after prosecutors in the US Attorney’s Office in DC acknowledged in a court filing that President Donald Trump’s $14 million renovation of the Reflecting Pool was “hasty and botched” and that there wasn’t evidence to support their assertion that Hearn had criminally damaged it.
“Davey Hearn is innocent and today’s dismissal reflects that simple fact. But this case never should’ve been brought in the first place. The Department of Justice’s decision to seek an indictment was a miscarriage of justice,” lawyers for Hearn said in a statement on Thursday.
The stunning about-face from the Justice Department last Friday angered Trump, who lashed out both publicly and privately at US Attorney Jeanine Pirro for rescinding the case. But the president did not fire Pirro, one of his most loyal allies, or ask for her resignation during a meeting at the White House on Monday, CNN has reported.
In admitting the case was flawed, Pirro’s office asked Edelman to dismiss the case “without prejudice,” meaning they would be able to pursue it again in the future if they wanted to. Hearn’s lawyers similarly asked for the case to be dropped, but urged the court to go one step further.
“Both parties thus agree that the case against Mr. Hearn should be dismissed; they disagree as to the nature of that dismissal,” Edelman wrote in a brief order Thursday evening. “Given the positions of the parties, the court discerns no reason why this felony case should remain pending against Mr. Hearn while the parties litigate, and the court resolves, the remaining legal issues.”
Hearn’s lawyers told the judge on Tuesday that they were concerned the case could be brought again given Trump’s frustration over how it was handled.
“Rather than bringing the matter to a close, the dismissal has become the subject of an ongoing apparent public disagreement within the Executive Branch itself,” they told him in court papers. “The government’s decision to dismiss has not eliminated the possibility that Mr. Hearn could again become the target of prosecution should political pressure yet again prevail over the facts and the evidence now reflected in the government’s motion to dismiss.”
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