It turns out that the president being embarrassed by the shoddy refinishing job his contractors did on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and then pushing an absurd conspiracy theory about box-cutter-wielding criminals to save face isn’t enough to sustain a prosecution (yet).
Over the weekend, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. — headed by former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro — moved to dismiss its case against former Olympic athlete Davey Hearn. The Justice Department had charged Hearn with felony destruction of property, accusing him of having damaged the pool lining Trump handed a company a no-bid contract to install ahead of the Fourth of July. The government admitted that peeling and damage observed in the liner was, as was obvious to virtually everyone, the result of a “botched installation” and “contractor error.”
Trump was not pleased over losing his intended scapegoat, telling reporters in the Oval Office on Monday that Pirro had “choked” before lashing out at a reporter who asked if he was considering removing her from her post.
“She folded like an umbrella,” he said. “I was disappointed with Jeanine Pirro, really disappointed with Jeanine Pirro.”
Prosecutors dropped three additional misdemeanor cases brought against individuals —- Justin Carreno, Sophie Dennison-Gibby, and Cameron Thiers — arrested over the Reflecting Pool fiasco in July.
In a series of angry Truth Social posts, Trump posted a video supposedly showing the destruction taking place — which conveniently was unavailable to the government over the course of the last two months — and demanded that his supporters “look for yourselves at the VANDALISM that took place at The Reflecting Pool. The material is being cut with a knife or a box cutter, for all to see!”
The video showed an aerial shot of the Reflecting Pool, and contained no visible evidence of an individual slashing the lining, especially while roughly half a dozen maintenance workers worked on the pool.
“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool. I don’t know what she was thinking,” Trump wrote in another post. “To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM, that included the grass, which had a big 86 47 emblazoned in giant letters on it, and other elements of the surrounding area. There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS! President DJT”
The president and his administration previously claimed that these shadowy aquatic villains had cut a 300-foot gash into the pool lining. The claim appeared to stem from a report from the National Parks Service that identified two roughly 170-foot-long gashes in strips of foam filler lining the expansion joints, not the “American Flag Blue” epoxy coating ordered by Trump.
Pirro met with the president on Monday, bringing with her a large box of evidence presumably to aid her in pleading her (lack of a) case to the president. It’s nothing less than a humiliation for Pirro, who placed herself front and center in the administration’s push to gin up a false narrative that the pool had been intentionally vandalized. Pirro insisted at a news conference held to announce the indictment of Hearn in early J uly that he had damaged the pool with his “bare hands” and that an “expert” would prove the government’s case.
“He damaged the pool!” she exclaimed.
It turns out she misled the public.
Trump doesn’t know when to stop picking at the wound, though — or in this case, the peeling Reflecting Pool liner. But it seems like even his own party is over the theatrics related to the National Mall.
On Monday, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) joked that Hearn could likely sue the government over the vindictive prosecution. “I mean, he can add an apology to the damages part of his lawsuit, but my guess is he’s going to be looking for money. He may be the first customer of the anti-weaponization fund,” Kennedy told reporters, referencing another one of Trump’s controversial projects: a fund to pay out millions in compensation to victims of government “weaponization.” The president likely intended the $1.8 billion slush fund to benefit his supporters — particularly the Jan. 6 rioters he pardoned — but he’s inadvertently creating a whole new class of former defendants who could take him to the cleaners.
