U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro is being called out for her decision to file criminal charges against innocent victims in order to stay on Donald Trump's good side and help him avoid blame for a "slimy, green mess."
Political analyst Jarvis DeBarry slammed Pirro in his MS NOW column Thursday for the high-profile prosecution of 67-year-old David Hearn, a former US Olympian canoeist whose vandalism charges Pirro couldn't make stick.
"In charging Hearn and others with crimes, the apparent motives of Pirro’s office — and the Trump administration, more broadly — appear worse than 'base,'" DeBerry wrote.
"They’re gross, even despicable: The president needs to feel something other than embarrassment over his inability to refurbish a pool."
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool lining at the heart of the case began to peel during a Trump-orchestrated renovation that went swiftly awry.
While Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum continue to contend vandalism was to blame, Pirro said in court filings — in which she dropped charges against Hearn — that shoddy construction was at fault.
On Thursday, DeBarry demanded readers hold their applause for Pirro, arguing she knew the case was bogus from the beginning.
Rather than acknowledge a botched $16 million project, Pirro, in an effort to spare Trump's feelings, prosecuted "innocent bystanders," argued DeBarry.
Hearn paid the cost with his reputation, the columnist said.
"The charge against Hearn was so outrageous — especially in the context of multiple news reports about the renovation being a shoddy rush job — that there’s little reason to believe Pirro or the DOJ ever had any real hopes of finding Hearn guilty," he concluded.
"Their goal, instead, appears to have been finding a way to avoid telling the octogenarian boy-king that his $16 million vanity project was a slimy, green mess."