AP (“Trump says Pirro ‘folded like an umbrella’ in bid to drop Reflecting Pool vandalism charges“):
President Donald Trump said Monday that U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro “choked” and “folded like an umbrella” in moving to drop charges against a former Olympian accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Speaking at an unrelated Oval Office event, Trump ducked questions about whether he’d fire Pirro, a former Fox News host and longtime ally he handpicked as top federal prosecutor in the nation’s capital. But the president kept up his drumbeat of sharp criticism, saying he remained disappointed by her assessment that damage to the Reflecting Pool was the result of shoddy construction, not vandalism.
“Frankly, I think she choked because the judge was really vicious. Instead of going after the people that did it, the judge went after her and went after her department, and I guess she choked,” Trump said in response to a reporter’s question after he signed an executive order for military spouses. “I don’t know what the hell happened.”
The move to dismiss charges against David Hearn was an embarrassing setback for the Justice Department and marked a rare moment during Trump’s second term of an aide or political appointee openly defying him.
After initially posting on social media over the weekend, “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro,” Trump was still fuming two days later, insisting for several minutes that vandalism had marred the troubled project.
“I was disappointed with Jeanine Pirro, really disappointed,” the president said Monday.
[…]
The president further used his Monday comments to distance himself from the troubled project, which he had touted as part of his overarching efforts to spruce up the nation’s capital.
Trump said in April that he had consulted with a trio of firms that had worked on swimming pools at his properties and that the one he picked for the Reflecting Pool project had done work at his golf course in Northern Virginia. That firm was Virginia-based Atlantic Industrial Coatings, which was awarded a $14.7 million no-bid contract to repaint and waterproof its concrete floor.
“I have a guy who’s unbelievable at doing swimming pools,” Trump said then. “He looked at it. He called me up. He said, ‘Sir, we can do something on it.’”
But the president insisted Monday that “I didn’t know the contractor” and for the first time hinted that he wasn’t pleased by the work that was done to get the Reflecting Pool ready in time for Independence Day celebrations.
“I’m not saying I was 100% thrilled with the contractor, but the contractor was rushing. We wanted to get it open for July 4th,” he said.
NYT (“Pirro Meets With Trump at the White House After He Said She ‘Choked’ in Reflecting Pool Case“):
President Trump met with Jeanine Pirro at the White House on Monday, hours after saying that she had “choked” when she concluded that the damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was not the work of vandals, as the president has claimed.
Ms. Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., arrived at the White House on Monday afternoon and was taken to meet with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting. She was not fired by Mr. Trump, nor did she offer her resignation in that meeting, according to two people briefed on the outcome.
Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, was also at the White House when she arrived. Mr. Burgum has in recent days joined Mr. Trump in railing against Ms. Pirro’s decision to drop charges against David Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist who was accused of pulling up a two-square-foot piece of the pool’s lining. Both men assert that the damage to the pool has been the work of vandals and not “the result of a botched installation and not vandalism,” as Ms. Pirro indicated in a Friday court filing.
The decision to drop the charges set Ms. Pirro — a longtime ally and loyal appointee of a president — on a collision course with Mr. Trump, who has made sure to inflict consequences on people within his orbit who contradict his claims. In her filing, Ms. Pirro openly undermined Mr. Trump’s narrative that the Reflecting Pool’s peeling liner was caused by people slashing its coating with knives.
[…]
In her filing, Ms. Pirro sought to dismiss a felony charge against Mr. Hearn. She said that her prosecutors had been misled by the Interior Department, which had awarded a no-bid contract to a first-time government contractor to repair the landmark.
In other words, Ms. Pirro’s filing confirmed what Mr. Trump had dismissed for weeks when he tried to convince the public that any problems that crept up during the renovations — from algae blooms to peeling liner — were a result of vandalism and not shoddy contract work.
Prosecutors in Washington are also dropping charges against three more defendants who had been accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool. Along with Mr. Hearn, prosecutors moved to drop charges against three others: Justin Carreno, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Cameron Thiers, who all were charged with destruction of property less than $1,000.
Norman L. Eisen, one of Mr. Hearn’s attorneys, said in a statement released shortly after the filing that the charges against Mr. Hearn amounted to abuse of government power.
This is a classic case of “He said, she said.”
On the one hand, we can believe a former Olympian was riding around on his bicycle with a knife, plotting to do damage to the Reflecting Pool. And three other people, acting alone or in concert, were also out to damage the Reflecting Pool. Which, so far as I know, has not been so attacked in its previous century-plus history.
On the other hand, we can believe that Trump’s pool guy—whom he has never met!—botched a job he was wholly unqualified to do while under orders to rush to complete it by July 4th.
It’s 50-50, really.
