President Trump rebuked Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, after she dropped her effort to prosecute a former Olympic athlete for alleged vandalism to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, challenging her conclusion that a "botched installation" during a renovation, rather than vandalism, had damaged the pool.
The controversy over one of Trump's favorite civic projects also prompted criticism of Pirro from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who said he had provided the U.S. attorney's office with "expert and eyewitness testimony to the damage done by vandals." The disagreement between Burgum and Pirro, two longtime loyalists of the president, marked an unusual example of the administration feuding publicly with itself.
"I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro," Trump wrote in a social-media post Saturday, referring to a Friday court filing that dismissed the criminal indictment against David Hearn, a former Olympic canoe racer. "I don't know what she was thinking?" he wrote. "To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM."
Trump has insisted for months that vandals were to blame for damage to the bottom of the reflecting pool, which his administration had resurfaced ahead of America's 250th birthday. Pirro, a Trump-appointee, initially agreed.
"There was an effort, a violent effort, to rip up the sealant from the bottom of the pool," she told reporters last month when she announced a felony indictment against Hearn for destruction of government property. The charge carried a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
On Friday, Pirro's office pointed to documents from the Interior Department that "significantly undermine" the evidence that was the basis for charging the former Olympian.
Her office wrote in the court filing that a "visual inspection showed damage throughout the Reflecting Pool, even in the middle of the pool, where a vandal wouldn't likely attempt to peel the lining. Given all of this newly discovered information, it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism."
Aiming to resurface the pool ahead of July 4 celebrations, the government had awarded a contract to a Virginia-based company, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, without a full bidding process. The $16 million project became a national controversy when the pool bottom began to peel and the water turned from blue to green.
"It didn't peel off," Burgum said during a July 5 CNN interview, insisting that vandals with boxcutters had caused the damage: "There were people literally trying to destroy part of the monument."
Pirro's office blamed the Interior Department for providing "less than fulsome information" at the outset of the case and said it wouldn't have sought a grand-jury indictment had the agency been forthcoming with the information that was "clearly in its possession."
Her reversal drew the ire of Trump on Saturday, and later in the day of Burgum, whose agency oversees the reflecting pool, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The interior secretary appeared to blame Pirro for failing to land a conviction.
"The evidence is clear, vandals have repeatedly caused damage to the Reflecting Pool. Some of these acts were even caught on camera," Burgum wrote on social media. He said his department had provided Pirro's office with "every piece of evidence they asked for in the requested time line detailing each area of damage at the pool."
Despite the dismissal, Burgum vowed that the administration "won't back down to deranged people who want to destroy, deface, or degrade our monuments."
Hearn wasn't the only one charged by Pirro's office. Three other people were charged with misdemeanors for allegedly damaging the pool. Cameron Thiers, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Justin Carreno were arrested at the pool on June 20, a day after Hearn, according to court records.
Pirro's office appeared to drop the charge against Carreno on Friday. On Saturday, Thiers' attorney, G. Allen Dale, said he would be surprised if all the cases weren't dropped, given what was outlined by Pirro's office in the motion it filed in Hearn's case.
Attorneys for Dennison-Gibby and Carreno couldn't be reached for comment. The White House and Interior Department didn't immediately return a request for comment.
Comments