Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and one of President Donald Trump's most loyal defenders, now finds herself caught between two unappealing outcomes.
The former Fox News broadcaster abruptly dropped criminal charges against four people, including former Olympian David Hearn, who had been accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool during its Trump-ordered renovation, but now she faces the president's wrath for giving up, reported the Washington Post.
“It’s pretty close to a textbook definition of kakistocracy,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, which oversees the Reflecting Pool. “Pirro is between the proverbial rock and a hard place — getting fired if she tells the truth, or getting disbarred if she continues to lie.”
In a 20-page court filing, prosecutors in Pirro's office concluded that the pool's peeling liner was most likely the result of a rushed, flawed installation — not sabotage — and accused the Interior Department of withholding documents that would have undercut the case before it was ever brought.
That reversal put Pirro directly at odds with Trump, who has continued to insist publicly that vandals cut the liner with knives and poured corrosive chemicals into the pool, even sharing security footage that does not clearly support the claim. Trump has lashed out at Pirro on social media and in a "very pointed" phone call, saying she "folded like an umbrella" and that he doesn't know "what the hell happened."
Having already gone on Fox News and in press conferences to describe Hearn "forcefully and violently" damaging the pool, Pirro would risk professional and legal exposure by sticking to a version of events her own prosecutors now say the evidence doesn't support. But abandoning that narrative — as she has now done — invites the public fury of a president who does not tolerate contradiction.
Even some Republicans have struggled to make sense of the episode. Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) called it "a multiple vehicle pileup," questioning why charges were filed without a full investigation in the first place, while allowing that Pirro was "smart to pull it back" once she did.