U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s push to jail an alleged World War II Memorial vandal backfired when the judge cited her own filing to deny the demand.
Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh on Monday ordered Melissa Farris, 41, released from custody on two felony charges stemming from the Aug. 13 spray-painting of the World War II Memorial. Farris was sent home to Kentucky under court supervision.
Less than three hours after the release order, Pirro’s office filed a 30-page motion asking Sharbaugh to reconsider. On Tuesday, he denied it.
The judge said Pirro’s filing “largely misconstrues the nature of the Court’s ruling,” according to the minute order.
“The motion essentially just recycles the same arguments that the Court considered already,” Sharbaugh wrote.
Pirro’s office had argued in the filing that Farris posed an “exceptionally high risk of flight” and called the spray-painting “a brazen attack on one of the Nation’s most sacred monuments.”
The move came as Pirro was already under fire from President Donald Trump over a separate monument case, Raw Story reported. She had dropped charges against David Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist accused of damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool — a project Trump championed.
Trump said Pirro had “folded like an umbrella,” the Washington Post reported, and sources told the Post her job was in question.
“We will not tolerate this kind of criminal activism, and we will ensure that anyone who desecrates a veterans’ memorial is held fully accountable,” Pirro said in a Justice Department statement after Farris’s arrest.
Monday’s denial was not Sharbaugh’s first rebuke of Pirro’s office. The Associated Press reported last fall that he dismissed two felony assault cases at prosecutors’ request and warned from the bench that cases were being charged before they were properly investigated.
“That’s not the way it’s supposed to work, and it has real-world consequences,” Sharbaugh said at the time, according to the AP.
“This is becoming a real concern for the court just given the sheer numbers,” he added.
Farris, who told law enforcement she is homeless and had been living on benches, livestreamed herself spray-painting the memorial and said she was acting as a whistleblower. “I am accountable for the things that I do, and the choices that I make, and our government needs to be accountable for their choices too,” she said in the video.
A preliminary hearing is set for Sept. 3.
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