President Donald Trump sharply rebuked his handpicked U.S. attorney on Monday, saying Jeanine Pirro “choked” and “folded like an umbrella” after her office moved to drop charges against a former Olympian accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Speaking during an unrelated Oval Office event where he signed an executive order for military spouses, Trump kept up a drumbeat of criticism that began over the weekend with a social media post declaring he disagreed “100%” with Pirro. The president said he remained disappointed by her assessment that damage to theReflecting Pool stemmed from shoddy construction rather than vandalism.
Trump suggested that Pirro, a former Fox News host and longtime ally he installed as the top federal prosecutor in Washington, buckled under pressure from a federal judge. He claimed the judge “went after her and went after her department,” adding that he didn’t know what had happened but believed she lost her nerve. Despite the pointed criticism, Trump dodged questions about whether he planned to fire her. Pirro did not respond publicly to the president’s broadside, though she was seen walking into the White House on Monday evening.
The decision to drop charges against David Hearn was an embarrassing setback for the Justice Department and represented a rare instance during Trump’s second term of one of his appointees openly breaking with him. Hearn has maintained that he was on a bike ride on June 19 when he reached into the pool to examine its peeling coating and briefly touched a loose chunk before complying with a park worker’s instruction to let go of it. Charges were also dropped against three other people who had been accused of removing pieces of paint from the memorial in separate misdemeanor cases.
Trump also used the moment to distance himself from the troubled project, which he had personally championed as part of broader efforts to spruce up Washington ahead of Independence Day. In April, he boasted about consulting with firms that had worked on swimming pools at his properties and tapped Virginia-based Atlantic Industrial Coatings for a $14.7 million no-bid contract to repaint and waterproof the concrete floor. But Monday, the president insisted he hadn’t known the contractor — contradicting earlier remarks — while conceding he wasn’t entirely satisfied with how the work turned out. Crews have since drained the Reflecting Pool again for another round of repairs, with Trump promising it would reopen within two weeks, though officials have not disclosed what went wrong or how much it will cost taxpayers this time around.