Trump Wanted Pirro to Prosecute His Lie
Prosecutors cleared all four Reflecting Pool defendants; the Justice Department blames a botched no-bid paint job. Trump says the prosecutor who ended the case "folded like an umbrella."
Trump turned on his own prosecutor Monday. "I was disappointed with Jeanine Pirro, really disappointed," he told reporters in the Oval Office. "She folded like an umbrella." Then, "Frankly, I think she choked."
Pirro's crime: she stopped prosecuting a story that was never true.
Narativ reported Saturday the vandalism was a lie. The Justice Department’s own filing killed it Friday: prosecutors moved to dismiss the felony indictment against David Hearn, the 67-year-old former Olympic canoeist arrested June 19 after he touched a peeling strip of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool liner during a bike ride. The filing blamed "contractor error" and a "botched installation" — not vandalism. Since Friday, Pirro’s office has dropped or moved to drop the misdemeanor cases against Justin Carreno, Cameron Thiers and Sophie Dennison-Gibby.
Four accused. Zero vandals.
Hearn’s account never changed: he was biking past, picked up a chunk of coating already peeling off the bottom, and dropped it when a park worker told him to.
Trump told the vandalism story three times, in detail. Somebody took "a knife, a box cutter and a razor" to 350 feet of liner, he said. The people who did it were "thugs," "sick," "terrible."
The Justice Department’s filing says: "contractor error."
The contractor the filing blames has a name Narativ readers already know.
