Trump Rips Jeanine Pirro for Dropping Botched Vandalism Case, Doesn't Fire Her

President Trump publicly tore into his own hand-picked U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia on Monday, accusing Jeanine Pirro of "choking" after her office dropped vandalism charges against a man wrongly accused of damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. He didn't fire her. She didn't quit. But the public dressing-down was real.

"I was disappointed with Jeanine Pirro. Really disappointed with Jeanine Pirro," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, according to CBS News. "She folded like an umbrella." He went further: "Frankly, I think she choked... I don't know what the hell happened."

Based on court filings reviewed by CBS News, the Justice Department moved Friday to dismiss the case against 67-year-old former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, who'd been charged with a felony for allegedly ripping sealant from the pool's lining. The damage wasn't vandalism at all. It was, in the government's own words, "contractor error" and a "botched installation" tied to Trump's own $14 million renovation of the site, according to CNN.

The sealant started peeling "almost immediately" after the renovation work finished, according to the court filing cited by The Independent. Pirro's office also said the Interior Department gave prosecutors "less than fulsome information" early on and didn't confirm the botched installation until after Hearn had already been indicted.

A retired Olympian who competed in three Games got arrested and charged with a felony for touching a pool that was already falling apart because of shoddy government contracting. His lawyers, Norm Eisen of Democracy Defenders Fund, Mary Dohrmann of the Washington Litigation Group, and Steve Levin of Steptoe LLP, said in a statement to The Independent that the case "should have never been brought" and that dismissal doesn't "erase the abuse of government power in arresting and charging" him.

It's hard to argue with that once you look at the timeline. Pirro herself held a press conference on July 2 accusing Hearn of "forcefully and violently" damaging the monument in a "deliberate act." She was wrong. The government's own renovation contractor was the actual problem.

Since Friday's filing, Pirro's office has also moved to drop charges against three other people facing misdemeanor counts tied to the same Reflecting Pool damage, according to court records reviewed by CBS News. That's four cases unwound in less than a week, all stemming from the same bad information about a $14 million project that Trump himself championed.

Trump is furious that his own DOJ admitted the renovation he touted was botched, and he's blaming Pirro for the admission rather than the underlying screwup. CNN reported that Trump had been "considering removing her" and was "blindsided" by the filing, with a senior administration official saying "the president did not know beforehand that she was going to do that."

Trump and Pirro spoke by phone Saturday in a call one source told CNN "wasn't pretty." Pirro reportedly told Trump that career officials in her office, not her personally, made the call to file the dismissal. A longtime career prosecutor in D.C. Superior Court actually signed the filing.

Trump also took a swing at the judge overseeing the case, telling reporters, "I think she choked, because the judge was really vicious. Instead of going after the people that did it, the judge went after her and went after her department." That's Trump's characterization of events, not an independently verified account of what the judge said or did.

Monday afternoon, Trump met with Pirro and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum at the White House, according to CNN. Burgum has stood by the administration's original vandalism claims even as Pirro's office walked them back. Multiple sources told CBS News that Pirro's job is safe "for now" and that she neither resigned nor was asked to.

Trump wants someone held accountable for a $14 million renovation going sideways and for the political embarrassment of admitting it publicly. But the actual failure traces back to a construction contractor and an Interior Department that didn't flag the botched installation in time, not to the prosecutor who eventually caught the mistake and un-charged an innocent man. Firing Pirro for correcting a wrongful prosecution would be firing her for doing her job.

Hearn still hasn't gotten an apology from the government, according to his attorneys. Whether Trump reshuffles his D.C. prosecutorial team over this, and whether Interior faces any accountability for the renovation itself, remains unresolved as of Monday's meeting.