Trump and Pirro clash over Reflecting Pool

What happened

President Donald Trump on Monday accused U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro of having “choked” over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool case. Trump told reporters that Pirro “folded like an umbrella” in moving to drop vandalism charges against four people, including former Olympic canoeist David Hearn. Announcing the decision last week, the Justice Department said Trump’s $14 million renovations of the Washington landmark were “hasty and botched.” It also criticized the Interior Department for withholding key information about the project.

Who said what

The president has reportedly considered firing former Fox News host Pirro, a longtime Trump loyalist, for contradicting his assertion that bad actors are to blame for the pool’s peeling paint. “To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM,” Trump wrote on Truth Social over the weekend. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said on social media that “the evidence is clear, vandals have repeatedly caused damage” to the pool.

Waterproofing experts concluded the peeling paint was “probably caused by application errors,” The Washington Post said. The president is miffed because “Pirro did not give the White House a heads-up about dropping the charges,” a White House official told the outlet. Pirro met with Trump in the Oval Office, but she was not fired and did not offer her resignation, two sources told The New York Times.

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What next?

Hearn’s lawyers are expected to respond this week to Pirro’s request to dismiss the case against him. He has “legal options that could unearth more embarrassing details on how his case was handled,” CNN said.