U.S. Olympic Hero Reveals Arrest Trauma Over Trump’s Green Slime Pool

A U.S. former sports star has claimed he was locked up for five hours and held “incommunicado” after he dared to touch the peeling paint in Donald Trump’s algae-infested Reflecting Pool.

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David Hearn, 67, a three-time Olympic canoeist, was arrested on June 19 and charged with misdemeanor destruction of government property after he reached into the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to feel a flap of detached “American flag blue” liner.

Speaking to MS NOW’s Chris Hayes on Monday, Hearn relived the ordeal at the Hains Point Park Police lockup that followed his arrest. “I didn’t know how long I was gonna be held,” he said. He says he was photographed, fingerprinted, and returned to a cell without being allowed a phone call.

“Nobody really knew I was there,” Hearn told Hayes. “I was held incommunicado that whole time. Was never read my rights.”

Sitting alongside Hearn, his attorney was scathing. “There’s no basis for this. We’re gonna contest it vigorously,” Norm Eisen told Hayes, before delivering a withering opinion on the charges. “It’s not a federal crime to touch water,” he said. “If you look in the statutes, you’ll see there’s no such federal crime.”

Hearn competed in the canoe slalom at the 1992 Barcelona, 1996 Atlanta, and 2000 Sydney Games, and is a two-time whitewater world champion. He maintains he is a “curious citizen” who damaged nothing.

“I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything,” he previously told The Washington Post. “By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.”

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The arrest is part of a saga that is spiraling into farce. Trump’s decision to repaint the basin “American flag blue” ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary on July 4 appears to have increased heat absorption and triggered the worst algae bloom in years.

Workers vacuuming the slime and dousing it in hydrogen peroxide have made things worse, with blue paint peeling off in sheets and a dead duckling spotted floating in the murk.

Rather than own the botched job, Trump, 80, has blamed shadowy “leftist” vandals, posting on Truth Social that “SICK, DERANGED PEOPLE” had sabotaged the pool. The U.S. Park Police and National Guard have since been deployed to patrol the National Mall.

The White House is standing firm. Spokesperson Taylor Rogers told the Beast it was “despicable” that a “deranged individual suffering from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome” would disparage the officers who arrested him.

Hearn—who was previously arrested by the Park Police in 1996, only to beat the charges—is due to appear in D.C. Superior Court on July 9. He says he is taking nothing for granted under the current administration.