The Justice Department's failed case against an Olympian canoeist they accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Monument Reflecting Pool should serve as a stark warning about the upcoming midterm elections, a legal expert said Wednesday.
Former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade told The New Republic's Greg Sargent she found a serious problem hidden within U.S. attorney Jeanine Pirro's filing officially dropping the case last week.
"Pirro’s crew didn’t just say, we don’t have the evidence," McQuade said. "They documented over 20 pages the evidence that they had received that demonstrated this failure. They talked about the company that was hired, they talked about their efforts, they talked about their failure. They talked about how it was overpainted, and why, and the dates and the problems and the peeling of the paint. So it isn’t just, you know, a one-sentence decision or motion. It is detailed facts over 20 pages."
Despite his own agency's findings, Interior Secretary Dough Burgum continued to indulge the president's belief that vandals had caused the damage, and Sargent asked what the takeaway was.
"This whole Reflecting Pool fiasco is completely buffoonish and a total embarrassment for Trump and so forth, and yet at the same time it’s deadly serious, right?" Sargent said.
"It’s an indicator that Trump is getting worse with his willingness to just use DOJ as a weapon in whatever way he decides at any given moment, and so what’s the worst-case scenario here going forward?"
The obvious concerns was more weaponized prosecutions, McQuade said, and she offered some specific cases Trump's government might bring against his enemies.
"The seashell case against Jim Comey, the effort to investigate what they’re calling the grand conspiracy out of Florida," she said. "I mean, imagine charges against people like John Brennan or other members of the intelligence community who are simply serving their country, charges against Anthony Fauci. I mean, I think we could see charges on any of these fronts."
But the most chilling concern is that Trump might use the Department of Justice to ensure Democrats don't regain congressional majorities for the final two years of his presidency, she said.
"I also worry about how the Justice Department might try to interfere in the midterm elections," McQuade said.
"With, you know, they’ve tried all kinds of things already to obtain voter rolls. The president is trying to use the Postal Service to prevent it from providing absentee and mail-in ballots to voters. So I worry about that."