Former U.S. Olympian David Hearn said he wasn’t expecting an encounter with law enforcement when he touched a piece of the peeling blue paint that has become the bane of President Donald Trump’s $14 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

“I was just out on about a 50-mile bike ride, and I decided to swing back over by the Reflecting Pool on my way back as a concerned, curious citizen,” Hearn told MS NOW’s Chris Hayes in an interview late Monday.

“I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong, so I had no reason to think I was going to be arrested … and kind of before I knew it, I was being handcuffed,” Hearn said.

The three-time U.S. Olympic canoeist was arrested Thursday and charged with misdemeanor destruction of government property. The arrest came after Trump attributed the pool’s algae-infested water and peeling coat of costly blue lining to vandals whom he said were trying to “destroy and demean our beautiful work.”

Trump said Saturday that law enforcement was investigating the “vandalism,” suggesting that “radical left lunatics” were behind the issues with the renovation project, which he pushed to complete ahead of America’s 250th Independence Day. The president alleged without evidence that saboteurs cut a 250-foot-long “gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work, competence, and money to build and complete.”

Hearn said officers took him to a U.S. Park Police jail nearby and held him for what seemed like hours.

“I didn’t know how long I was going to be held,” Hearn said.

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Sydney Carruth

Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter covering national politics and policy for MS NOW. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at SydneyCarruth.46 or follow her work on X and Bluesky.