There are few things more clarifying in Washington than watching a federal prosecutor drop charges against a national monument vandal, only to find herself rushing to the White House hours after the president publicly mocked her on camera.
That’s exactly what played out Monday.
Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, dropped felony vandalism charges last Friday against David Hearn. Hearn, a 67-year-old three-time Olympian, had been indicted by her own office for tearing apart the newly installed sealant lining of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Her office’s explanation was striking: the damage was primarily the result of a rushed and defective installation, not criminal vandalism, and Hearn deserved an apology.
Trump’s response on Saturday was brief and blunt: “I 100% disagree.”
By Monday morning in the Oval Office, he had more to say. “I think she choked.” Then came the line that will likely follow Pirro for years: “She folded like an umbrella.”
As originally reported, Pirro was at the White House within hours of those remarks. The meeting was not on the public schedule.
The substantive case Trump is making deserves to be examined clearly, because the contractor-error defense Pirro’s office offered is considerably weaker than it initially appeared. Trump released video showing the pool lining being cut with what appears to be a knife or box cutter, pointing to deliberate cutting rather than peeling caused by a defective installation. The phrase “86 47” burned into the nearby grass was not contractor error either. These are not signs of a botched construction project. They look like a coordinated vandalism campaign against a national landmark.
Pirro’s own office stated at indictment that it had evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hearn had “willfully destroyed” federal property and acted “forcefully and violently.” A grand jury agreed and handed down the indictment. Hearn pleaded not guilty. Then a D.C. Superior Court judge pushed back hard on the prosecution, and Pirro’s office walked away entirely.
Trump used exactly the right word: choked. When a judge applies pressure and a U.S. Attorney drops a strong case rather than fight it out, that is not a principled reassessment of the evidence. That is a prosecutor deciding the battle is not worth having.
For a D.C. U.S. Attorney appointed specifically to reverse the pattern of abandoned cases and dropped charges that has long plagued the District’s justice system, this was the wrong call at the worst possible moment. And if the umbrella metaphor sticks, it is because it fits.