Home Update: Pirro drops charges over botched Reflecting Pool renovation; Trump not happy
Trump's America

Update: Pirro drops charges over botched Reflecting Pool renovation; Trump not happy

Chris Graham
Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool
Photo: © 1 Andrew Thomas 1/Shutterstock.com

It would seem to be time to sack Jeanine Pirro from her post as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, in light of her office’s bungled prosecution of a former U.S. Olympian on what we knew all along was, ahem, a Trumped up felony charge related to the botched renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

You have to wonder if Donald Trump is with us on Pirro needing to go, but for different reasons than the rest of us are.


Update: 2:05 p.m. We have our answer on what Trump is thinking on this, from a post he made to Truth Social this afternoon:

“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? 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!”


Trump has been noticeably stone cold silent in the 15 hours since Pirro, the former Fox News talking head, moved to dismiss the criminal case against former U.S. Olympian David Hearn, who had faced 10 years in prison for damage done to the Reflecting Pool that Piro acknowledged in a court filing made public last night was caused by “flawed installation” rather than vandalism.

Also silent: Pirro, who was very public when she announced the charges last month, in which she asserted that Hearn had “ripped a piece of recently installed sealant on the bottom of the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial,” and said her office would “prove beyond a reasonable doubt, that Hearn willfully destroyed property at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.”

But according to the court filing from Pirro that was made public late Friday, her office is now aware that the sealant lining the bottom of the Reflecting Pool “almost immediately” began to peel after renovations were completed in June.

Her office only learned this, though, per the court filing, after the Department of the Interior provided additional documents “indicating that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor.”

“Given all of this newly discovered information, it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt,” Pirro wrote in the court filing.

How did we get from where Pirro was back in her breathy July 2 press conference – “prove beyond a reasonable doubt” – to where we got to last night?

Seems a fair question.

At the very least, Pirro needs to be future endeavored, and she should face sanction from the bar – her mishandling of this case is so egregious, disbarment would seem to be in order.

Hearn, 67, of Bethesda, Md., a slalom canoeist who competed in three Summer Olympics, faced significant prison time entirely because Trump wanted to blame the botched no-bid work done by cronies on far-left vandals, to fit his the world is stacked against me narrative.

Pirro seems to be trying to make the case for her defense that her office was merely acting on the information that it had at the time of the beginning of its prosecutor efforts in the case, but that argument presumes that her office needed to take action before all of the facts were in.

Which, of course, is very much the case – but only because Trump was demanding it.

Can’t wait to hear what he has to say about the case being dropped.

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Chris Graham

Chris Graham

Chris Graham is the founder and editor of Augusta Free Press. A 1994 alum of the University of Virginia, Chris is the author and co-author of seven books, including Poverty of Imagination, a memoir published in 2019. For his commentaries on news, sports and politics, go to his YouTube page, TikTok, BlueSky, or subscribe to Substack or his Street Knowledge podcast. Email Chris at [email protected].