Former Jack Smith Prosecutor Calls Trump DOJ's Case Against Olympian 'Anathema' to the Office
Key Takeaways
- •Mary Dorman, a former member of Jack Smith's special counsel team who is now Hearn's co-counsel, said the DOJ's handling of the case conflicted with the office's traditional prosecutorial standards.
- •The Justice Department sought dismissal after admitting it could not prove Hearn damaged the Reflecting Pool's lining, but the case formally ends only if a judge grants the motion.
- •Because the dismissal was filed without prejudice, the DOJ retains the option to recharge Hearn later, a move Dorman characterized as harassment.
- •Dorman described the prosecution as an abuse of government power against an innocent, ordinary citizen over a victimless alleged offense, and said the DOJ backed down because it knew it could not win in court.
- •Dorman's criticism echoed the Supreme Court's 1935 Berger v. United States decision holding that the government's interest in a prosecution is that justice be done rather than that it win the case.
A former federal prosecutor who served on Jack Smith's special counsel team said the Justice Department's now-abandoned prosecution of Olympian Davey Hearn was "anathema" to the very office that brought the case.
Speaking Saturday on the Legal AF podcast, Mary Dorman discussed how the DOJ she once knew would view the case against Hearn, who was indicted for allegedly touching the damaged Reflecting Pool. Dorman, a principal at the Washington Litigation Group, is Hearn's co-counsel. Smith's team, appointed by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland in late 2022, led the federal investigations into Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and his retention of classified documents — prosecutions that wound down after Trump's 2024 win as the department invoked its long-standing policy against charging a sitting president.
The DOJ moved to dismiss its charges against Hearn after conceding it could not prove that he damaged the pool's lining, though Dorman noted the case can still come back. Under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the government may dismiss an indictment only with a judge's leave, so the case formally ends only if the court grants the motion. She said the prosecution violated everything the office she "grew up in" once represented.
"It is anathema to anything that I would have done or my leaders when I was in the office would have done," Dorman said. "It can't be overstated."
She described the charge as an abuse of prosecutorial power against an ordinary person.
"This is an innocent man. This is an ordinary citizen who's done extraordinary things like many Americans," Dorman said. "And the government brought its full weight to prosecuting a victimless alleged offense that never occurred."
Dorman said the DOJ moved to dismiss only because "they know they cannot win in court where facts and law matter." However, she criticized the Trump administration for dropping the case without prejudice, which leaves the DOJ free to recharge Hearn later, and suggested another name for the move.
"Beating a dead horse is too kind of a phrase," she said. "It really is harassment."
Dorman, a former prosecutor, said the current DOJ had abandoned the "sacred oath" of protecting defendants' rights. Her framing echoes long-standing Supreme Court precedent: in Berger v. United States, a 1935 decision, the Court held that the government's interest in a criminal prosecution "is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done."
"When you have people who are not experienced and are incompetent at best and who...have bad intent and bad faith at worst, there's no chance of those rights being protected," she said.
Her remarks came in the Legal AF segment "Trump Feels the Heat as His DOJ Botches Cases!"
