Donald Trump unloaded on Washington, D.C. top federal prosecutor Jeanine Pirro after she moved to drop charges against a former Olympian who the president accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool despite his administration failing to produce evidence against him.
“I was disappointed in Jeanine Pirro. Really disappointed with Jeanine Pirro,” he said from the Oval Office on Monday. “She folded like an umbrella.”
The president said she “choked” and blamed the judge overseeing the case.
“I think she choked, because the judge was really vicious,” he said. “Instead of going after the people who did it, he went after her, and went after her department, and I guess she choked. I don’t know what the hell happened.”
Pirro filed a motion to dismiss criminal charges against David Hearn on Friday after the Trump administration admitted that damage to the landmark’s recently installed blue liner was “the result of flawed installation by the contractor.”
The president is now mulling whether to boot Pirro from the U.S. Attorney’s office, according to CNN. Asked whether he will reconsider her role as U.S. Attorney, Trump told a reporter “you’re fake news” and “don’t ever talk again.”
Hearn pleaded not guilty to one felony count of destruction of property earlier this month.
Pirro had previously lambasted Hearn in a press conference on July 2, claiming he “woefully destroyed property” in a “deliberate act” to damage the monument by “forcefully and violently” pulling the pool’s lining.
Friday’s court filing, however, states that the recently applied blue sealant at the bottom of the pool started to peel “almost immediately” after the work was completed following renovations to the site last month.
The Department of Interior “provided less than fulsome information at the outset of this case,” according to the filing from Pirro’s office. It was not until after the indictment was filed that the federal agent determined that the “damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism,” the filing states.
This is a developing story