The shoddy paint job of the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool was a silly summer story that should have been a relatively minor political embarrassment, at most, to President Donald Trump. Instead, the administration turned it into an appalling abuse of prosecutorial power.
On Monday, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro trekked to the White House to save her job as Trump fumed about her decision last week to dismiss charges against four people accused of damaging the pool’s newly installed lining.
In court documents, Pirro contradicted the president’s claims that the damage was the result of vandals. Instead, she blamed it on a “rushed and botched installation” by a government contractor and accused the Interior Department of misleading her office.
Trump complained to reporters that Pirro “choked” and “folded like an umbrella.” But given the details of the Reflecting Pool cases, which Pirro laid out in a 20-page filing seeking to drop the charges on Friday, it’s a wonder why any experienced prosecutor would have pursued them in the first place.
The government filed a felony charge against David Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist, for allegedly tugging “violently” at the pool liner in June. That charge carried a maximum prison sentence of 10 years. Three other defendants were charged with misdemeanor offenses for allegedly damaging the pool.
Pirro’s filing claims that only after her office secured indictments did it become clear that the Interior Department’s narrative wasn’t holding up. Government documents show that problems with the liner began during its installation and that it began peeling days before anyone was arrested. After the pool was drained last month, the damage was clearly more extensive than anything people could have accomplished from the pool’s edge.
It’s disconcerting that Interior Department officials were apparently willing to perpetuate false narratives to create scapegoats. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum continues to insist the damage was the work of vandals. Just as concerning, however, was the failure of prosecutors to do basic due diligence before taking the case to a grand jury.
Federal prosecution is no trifling matter. In addition to the distress of being arrested and detained, even charges that get dismissed can damage people’s reputations and livelihoods. A lawyer for one of the defendants said his client lost his job as a government contractor because of the ordeal. A member of Hearn’s legal team has threatened to sue the government for the “miscarriage of justice.”
Alas, this is not the only instance of the law being weaponized against perceived enemies of the president by the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. Who can forget the failed attempt last summer to prosecute a man for throwing a sandwich at a federal agent?
Most egregiously, Pirro’s prosecutors attempted in February to indict six Democratic lawmakers for a video telling members of the military that they are obligated to refuse unlawful orders. A grand jury rejected the charges. The rule of law prevailed, as it has again.
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