Olympian arrested after 'vandalising' Donald Trump's Reflecting Pool

A former Olympic athlete has been arrested in Washington DC after allegedly vandalising Donald Trump's renovated Reflecting Pool.

Three-time Olympic slalom canoeist David Hearn, 67, has denied damaging the pool, which spans the space between the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument.

The Reflecting Pool has undergone a $14.2million (£10.7million) renovation led by the President to paint the bottom of the water feature "American flag blue" to coincide with the US's 250th anniversary.

Paintwork and leak repairs were finished on June 5, but soon after algae began to emerge throughout the pool and chunks of the resurfacing material were stripped from the surface.

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Mr Trump said on Truth Social there had been "real problems with Vandalism at the beautiful Reflecting Pool" on Saturday.

But Mr Hearn, who achieved a career-best finish of ninth in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, told the Washington Post he only reached into the pool after noticing a piece of blue liner partially detached.

He said: "I didn’t vandalise anything. I didn't destroy or break or peel anything.

"By the time I realised what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs."

The Olympian said he was cycling a route near the Lincoln Memorial then decided to see the newly-refurbished memorial and stuck his hand into the water only to see what the material felt like.

Mr Hearn will now appear in DC Superior Court on July 9, charged with destruction of government property.

The President alleged that vandals had used chemicals to damage the Reflecting Pool, but claimed that 75 per cent of algae had now been removed.

In a Truth Social post on Saturday evening, Mr Trump said "many additional people have been arrested" for vandalising the "beautiful" pool.

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Describing his renovations, he said: "It hasn't looked or worked like this since 1922, when it was originally built, but even then, it leaked badly, and didn't work."

He added: "What these terrible vandals have done is a true affront to both Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and should be dealt with accordingly."

The President said he has now met with contractors and admitted his administration would "probably be forced to release and drain much of the water in order to do the necessary repairs".

The cost of refurbishing the pool ahead of July 4 has ballooned beyond the original $4million budget, awarded to Atlantic Industrial Coatings through a no-bid contract.

A second no-bid contract, worth $1.7million was given to Greenwater Services, owned by a Republican donor, to install "advanced nanobubbler technology" to kill algae in the pool.

In a social media statement on Thursday, the Department of the Interior compared algae to the situation in the Strait of Hormuz.

"The Reflecting Pool water is crystal clear, and our National Park Service team is now vacuuming up the dead algae resting on the bottom of some parts of the Reflecting Pool—just like the destroyed Iranian Navy resting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf," the Department of the Interior said.

The Department of the Interior was continuing to vacuum the pool on Saturday and had poured hydrogen peroxide in an attempt to kill the disruptive green plants.

In 2012, under former President Barack Obama, the Reflecting Pool was drained and cleaned for $100,000 to prevent a similar algae growth.

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