This summer, the United States government put an Olympic athlete in handcuffs for touching a strip of loose plastic. It’s a case that should lead to a sprawling investigation of the Department of Justice itself.
As you may remember, former Olympic canoeist David Hearn was detained by National Guardsmen at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, indicted on a felony carrying ten years in prison, and publicly branded a vandal by the Secretary of the Interior. The pool liner he touched was already peeling (as Interior’s own engineers had flagged eight days earlier), a consequence of Trump’s rushed and botched makeover of the National Mall ahead of America’s 250th celebrations. Prosecutors already knew about the renovation errors.
Yet they indicted Hearn anyway.
Jeanine Pirro’s office eventually dropped the case, admitting it couldn’t support the charge. Of course, Donald Trump’s reaction was to say she “choked,” and then to push the Justice Department to refile. Last week, a federal judge dismissed the indictment permanently so the government could never try again. And this week, Hearn’s legal team, including Norm Eisen and former DOJ Inspector General Michael Bromwich, sent a 21-page letter to the watchdogs at Justice and Interior demanding a full investigation into who did this, who pressured them, and why.
I know what it feels like. I sent one of the first letters of that kind to Trump’s DOJ last year.
After Trump signed an executive order falsely accusing me of stealing classified information and committing treason, he stripped my security clearance and ordered the Department of Homeland Security and the Attorney General to investigate me. The order identified no wrongdoing. It didn’t need to. The offense was that I had publicly revealed the depths of his incompetence and corruption.
That June, my lawyer Abbe Lowell filed a formal complaint with the inspectors general of DOJ and DHS. We asked a simple question: are your departments being used to punish dissent, and are your employees aware they’ve been directed to violate the constitutional rights of an American citizen in the process? The answer was already visible. People I went to high school with were getting calls from federal agents. Multiple U.S. government employees whom I was friends with were fired for mere association. I was told they were already digging through my emails.
Sixteen months later, I’m still waiting for a serious answer.
Hearn and I aren’t special. Chris Krebs got his own memo the same day I did. James Comey and Letitia James were indicted by a prosecutor a court later found was never lawfully appointed. Across the U.S. government, career lawyers were pushed out for refusing to sign onto bogus cases, and the ones who stayed came under grave pressure to bring charges against the president’s enemies, whether or not they had evidence.
But if they thought they’d get away with it, they’re more intellectually challenged than I expected. None of this was an accident, and none of it was done in ignorance. The prosecutors who indicted Hearn had the exculpatory evidence; they went forward anyway. The officials who executed the order against me knew that a president isn’t allowed to declare someone guilty of a crime and then have them investigated in order to find some kind of evidence. These were all lawyers who swore an oath to the Constitution and were bound by professional rules that forbid exactly this. They made a choice, and they made it knowing the law was on the other side.
“Investigate the investigators” was Trump’s own slogan in 2019 while he was being probed for potential collusion with a foreign adversary, Russia. Like all of his slogans (“Drain the swamp!” “Lock them up!” “Stop the steal!”) this one’s going to be turned against him.
The process of accountability starts with the inspectors general, even the ones Trump installed after firing seventeen of their predecessors in his first week. These letters create a real-time record of misconduct — opening lines in eventual investigations into how Trump’s prosecutors were directed to bring fake charges against people as a means of retaliation. But it can’t end there. Every prosecutor who signed an indictment they knew they couldn’t prove should face disbarment or prosecution. Every official who retaliated against a citizen for protected speech should end up in a courtroom. And the next Justice Department should reopen every one of these cases… and turn the focus on the investigators themselves.
By the way, I’m a firm believer that consequences are not vengeance. They’re the only thing that stops the next administration, of either party, from doing it again. They hoped we would forget. We won’t.
Your friend, in defiance,
P.S. We built the Anti-Weaponization Fund for exactly the people in this piece: whistleblowers, fired public servants, and journalists targeted by presidential revenge. DEFIANCE.org is a nonprofit club for the courageous, and paid memberships fund efforts like it. We announce a new one every Wednesday at 5pm ET. Become a member and help us investigate the investigators.
DEFIANCE DAILY
In case you missed it, Tuesday night’s episode of DEFIANCE Daily is below. Catch our next episode tonight at 5 pm ET!
TRACK THE TRUMP-EPSTEIN READING ROOM & BOOKMOBILE
The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Bookmobile will be in Manchester, New Hampshire, tomorrow, Friday, October 9. Meanwhile, the Reading Room will be on display TODAY through Sunday in Columbus, Ohio.
Plan a future visit and share with others. Check out the tour schedule and RSVP HERE.
THE ANT HILL IS OUR MEMBERS-ONLY CORNER OF THE COLONY, WHERE “DEFY ANTS” GET MORE THAN JUST THE NEWSLETTER.
IF YOU’RE ALREADY A DEFIANCE MEMBER, THEN MARCH RIGHT IN. IF NOT, SIGN UP HERE, SO YOU DON’T MISS A THING.
