A woman accused of vandalising a Second World War memorial in Washington with soap bubbles and graffiti could face up to 10 years in prison.
The alleged vandal scrawled “Clean hands dirty $” in red paint on the memorial. They also filled a nearby fountain with bubble solution. The incident occurred on Thursday on the National Mall.
By Friday, Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, announced that a suspect had been arrested.
Ms Pirro said on X that her office was filing two felony charges against Melissa L Farris: “Depredation Against Property of the United States and Destruction of Veterans’ Memorials”. The offences carry penalties of up to 10 years in prison.
“Vandalising our Second World War Memorial is a despicable attack on a sacred monument honouring the Americans who fought and died for our freedom. Those Americans include my father and grandfather,” Ms Pirro wrote.
The vandalism comes weeks after Donald Trump, the US president, said the nearby Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was deliberately damaged. He called the people responsible “animals”.
“Our beautiful Second World War Memorial was just hit by Spray Painting Vandals,” he said on Friday on his Truth Social site. He posted in all capitals: “There can be no greater insult to those who died in the Second World War.”
The Veterans of Foreign Wars called what happened “an act of profound disrespect” and “a slap in the face” to veterans and their families.
The Second World War Memorial is just east of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on the Mall. After a botched repair job earlier this year left the pool with peeling blue sealant and green algae, Mr Trump blamed the issues on vandalism without providing evidence.
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David Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist, was charged in late July with deliberately damaging the reflecting pool, but the justice department later successfully moved to dismiss that case, saying evidence prosecutors had received refuted the idea that vandals were to blame.
Mr Trump later called a “disgrace” Ms Pirro’s assessment that damage to the reflecting pool was the result of shoddy construction and not the work of vandals, as he claimed.
The case dismissal was an embarrassing setback for a justice department that had previously echoed Mr Trump’s claims and billed the prosecution as accountability for damage at a Washington landmark, a pet project of the president.
Ms Pirro blamed the interior department for providing “less than fulsome [sic] information at the outset of the case”. It was a jarring turn in position from Ms Pirro, who had claimed the government’s case was built on “tremendous evidence” when she announced the indictment.
Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, in a posting on X, appeared to push back against Ms Pirro’s criticism, claiming some of the acts of vandalism were captured on video.