Trump Doubles Down On Conspiracy Theories After DOJ Drops Reflecting Pool Vandalism Charges

from the it’s-always-conspiracy-tuesday-in-this-white-house dept

We’ll see how long US Attorney (and, of course, former Fox News personality) Jeanine Pirro gets to keep her job. I would guess the exit door is only inches away from hitting her ass since she refused to carry out Donald Trump’s plan to punish Reflecting Pool visitors for highlighting the failures of his no-bid contract buddies.

Former Olympian David Hearn got rung up first on federal vandalism charges. Then he got un-rung, once the DOJ told the court Doug Burgum’s Interior Department had basically lied to it about the most likely causes of the peeling sealant and algae swarms that embarrassed the president into pressing criminal charges and threatening journalists.

The crux of dismissal motion by the DOJ was this:

[I]t was not until after the return of the indictment, that the DOI provided additional documents to the USAO-DC indicating that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings (“AIC”), and the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026. It was not until after these documents were produced that USAO-DC first became aware of information showing that the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism as initially represented by DOI. Indeed, USAO DC could only rely (on the information provided by DOI that the damage was entirely caused by vandals, including the defendant in this case, David Hearn…

Despite the insult of being lied to by a fellow member of the federal government, the DOJ could only bring itself to move for a dismissal without prejudice, which means the administration can always take another swing at Hearn and the other Reflecting Pool defendants.

The good news is that everyone facing criminal charges for supposedly “vandalizing” the botched, hasty pool repair job is now off the hook… at least for now.

Court records now show that prosecutors are dropping the charges against the three other defendants – Justin Carreno, Cameron Thiers and Sophie Dennison-Gibby – who were all accused of destruction of property with a value of less than $1,000.

The bad news is everything else. Ever since the first dismissal, both Donald Trump and DOI Secretary have done little more than bash Pirro for actually doing her damn job and claiming (again, without evidence) that the Reflecting Pool was vandalized, rather than just mishandled by a.) one of Trump’s donors/pool guys and b.) a company that had never been awarded a federal contract before.

For what it’s worth, it seems Pirro did confront Trump and Burgum about their wild antifa-vandalism-whatever-the-fuck assertions. Pirro did the right thing and — according to this report — did it well.

Mr. Trump raged against Ms. Pirro in private on Monday. Then he raged a little to reporters. Rumors she would be fired burbled through West Wing. Then he raged a little bit more before hosting a high-drama, face-to-face meeting with Ms. Pirro at the White House worthy of two decorated veterans of confrontational reality TV.

Mr. Burgum had been invited too, so Ms. Pirro came prepared. She entered the White House from the West Executive driveway in a bright red blazer that matched her fight-back mood, schlepping a white box containing evidence, plus a black box with documents, on wheels.

This confrontation seemed to have gone as well as it possibly could. According to NYT sources, Pirro made a solid case that Burgum had concocted a vandalism cover story to conceal his contribution to the Reflecting Pool embarrassment. This is as good as it gets when it comes to Trump:

Mr. Trump seemed considerably less angry by day’s end, the person said.

It didn’t last long. In addition to the insults he handed out immediately following the Hearn dismissal, Trump had this to say in the days following the White House meeting with Pirro:

“U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro should re-visit her hastily made decision,” ​Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

[…]

Trump, who has ​repeatedly alleged that vandals damaged the pool, has sharply ​criticized Pirro for dropping the case, saying this week that she had “choked” under pressure from a judge and “folded like an ​umbrella.”

And, as is par for the course for Trump, he’s also attacked the judge handling the case (who did nothing more than respect the government’s dismissal motion) and disparage the work done by the pool crews he so recently defended as so far above reproach that any issues with the pool whatsoever could only be due to malicious acts of vandalism.

If this were a normal presidency and a normal timeline, I’d say something pithy like “it’s all over but the desperate flailing.” But it isn’t, so any pithiness is immediately undercut by the realization that “desperate flailing” is MAGA GOP SOP, and with this party in power, it can always be converted into actual punishment of Trump’s perceived enemies.

Trump can never be wrong, so he’s back on his vandalism bullshit.

President Trump on Saturday posted photos of alleged vandalism to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool amid a push for Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, to revisit a recent decision to drop charges related to the pool.

Late Saturday, the president posted two photos of what appeared to be graffiti and some peeling of the coating of the pool. Both photos were labeled with the word “Vandalism.”

Just imagine the dumbest, weakest, vaguest, conspiracy theory-ist shit you’ve ever seen. Now, lower your expectations.

These are pictures taken of something somewhere. One is labeled “RIP,” which is hardly instructive since we can’t tell what this is or what relevance this peeling has to do with anything. Even if we are to immediately believe (or even recognize) these to be photos of the Reflecting Pool and its lining, there’s nothing in here that immediately suggests malicious damage, rather than what’s already on the record: a hasty application job done by under-qualified people working under severe time constraints and somehow still managing to go millions of dollars over budget.

These are the sort of things you bring to the attention of the contractor performing the work, not the sort of thing you use to support criminal charges. It’s one thing to see a shattered window and a heavy object nearby. It’s quite another to see some peeling weather stripping around the sill and claiming your house has been vandalized.

This government is nearly as dangerous as it is stupid. But that’s only because its stupidity is unparalleled. The most venal president in history is seeing the end results of his willingness to allow his loyalty to be purchased. It’s the worst form of kleptocracy: one that’s fully bought into the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

Filed Under: asshats, department of interior, doj, donald trump, doug burgum, failure, jeanine pirro, trump administration

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