US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro listens as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to the press on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Foreign Ministers Meeting in Pasay, Metro Manila, on July 23, 2026. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/Pool via REUTERS
The Trump Department of Justice revealed something truly horrifying about itself last week after it dropped a "botched" indictment, according to one expert.
Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor, argued on a new episode of his podcast, "Justice Matters," that the Trump DOJ's decision to drop its indictment against David Hearn, an Olympic canoeist, for allegedly vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool suggests that the department is in "ready, fire, aim" mode.
For instance, Kirschner noted that the Trump DOJ didn't take responsibility for the facts it presented to the judge in the case. Instead, the department blamed the Department of the Interior for the information it presented.
"Talk about finger-pointing," Kirschner said. "Talk about the refusal to take responsibility for your botched indictment. That is ugly. That is unseemly. As a career federal prosecutor, including decades that I served in that very office, the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office, you don't indict first and investigate later. Nor do you take the word of another agency of government."
Kirschner also noted that the prosecutor in the case, former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, appeared to be investigating a foregone conclusion rather than applying facts to the case.
"That is not the way prosecution works," Kirschner said. "Not in the 'Before Times,' but in the legal upside down [world] courtesy of Trump and Todd Blanche and Jeanine Pirro, it is ready, fire, aim, and that is inexcusable. It's horrific, and it is a gross abuse of prosecutorial discretion and power."