Man arrested near Trump’s reflecting pool plans to fight obscenity charge

Christian Miles berated Oklahoma state troopers near Washington DC landmark subject to botched renovation

A Washington DC resident arrested this week near the National Mall’s reflecting pool told the Guardian he planned to fight the charges, as Donald Trump continues to blame vandals for the botched renovation of the pool.

After the Trump administration spent $14.2m renovating thebody of water in front of the Lincoln Memorial to turn it “American flag” blue in time for the US’s 250th birthday next month, the pool has been beset with algae blooms and peeling paint. Trump has claimed, without evidence, that the pool had been slashed with a knife.

Earlier this week, Trump said on social media that six people had been arrested “for the damage they did to our country’s now beautiful Reflecting Pool”.

A DC resident seen on video being dragged away from the reflecting pool in handcuffs on Monday is Christian Miles, a freelance video editor who told the Guardian on Tuesday that he was charged with violating a federal obscenity law for berating a group of Oklahoma state troopers guarding the reflecting pool.

Miles, a former US navy submariner, has made it a personal project in recent months to “document the creeping police state” since Trump’s federal takeover of policing in Washington DC by filming himself confronting, and often berating , federal troops and officer around the city.

He told the Guardian that he planned to contest the administrative law charge that he violated section 2.34 (a) (2) of the Code of Federal Regulations, which prohibits disorderly conduct by someone who uses “language, an utterance, or gesture, or engages in a display or act that is obscene, physically threatening or menacing, or done in a manner that is likely to inflict injury or incite an immediate breach of the peace.”

Miles posted an edited video of his encounter with the Oklahoma troopers on YouTube, which seems to be similar in nature to his previous encounters over the past 10 months with other officers and troops. The only difference, it appears, is that this run-in took place after the president started to claim that vandals, not shoddy work by his hand-picked contractors, was to blame for the rapidly deteriorating condition of the renovated reflecting pool.

In an email to the Guardian, Miles noted the irony that one of the Oklahoma state troopers he argued with before his arrest told him that the US was obviously a free society “because you can be out here and you can video all you want to … Go to China, they’d run over you in a tank in Red Square.”

According to Miles, he was arrested seven minutes later for using obscene language as he protested against the security crackdown at the reflecting pool.