Jeanine Pirro faced the cameras on July 2 with characteristic self-assurance to announce the indictment of the 67-year-old ex-Olympian David Hearn for trashing \u201csacred\u201d government property, President Trump\u2019s highly prized but shoddily renovated Reflecting Pool.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not only a priority for the president, but for myself,\u201d said Ms. Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, disclosing felony vandalism charges against Mr. Hearn for touching the lining of the pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. She added: \u201cWe will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hearn willfully destroyed property.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was not the case.<\/p>\n
Ms. Pirro\u2019s office dramatically reversed course<\/a> on Friday, not only withdrawing the charge against Mr. Hearn but blasting the Interior Department for the rushed and \u201cbotched\u201d renovation, along with U.S. Park Police officials who fed bad information that led her to publicly cite \u201ctremendous evidence\u201d against Mr. Hearn. In the process, intentionally or not, she skated perilously close to contradicting Mr. Trump \u2014 and he noticed.<\/p>\n Ms. Pirro\u2019s 20-page filing<\/a> did not refer to, much less rebuke, Mr. Trump for claiming the damage was caused by left-wing vandals rather than his administration\u2019s missteps. But it raised innate doubts about his assertion that criminals had slashed the pool\u2019s lining with a \u201cknife or blade.\u201d<\/p>\n That Ms. Pirro, a former Westchester, N.Y., district attorney and Fox News personality was aiming much of her criticism not at Mr. Trump, but his interior secretary, Doug Burgum, who oversaw the issuance of a no-bid contract to renovate the pool, did not appear to matter much.<\/p>\n On Saturday morning, Mr. Trump dashed off a post on Truth Social that made clear he was unhappy with Ms. Pirro, a friend and ally since the 1980s.<\/p>\n \u201cI disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro,\u201d Mr. Trump wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM,\u201d he wrote, adding, \u201cThere may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Pirro\u2019s U-turn was a rare instance in which a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney publicly acknowledged that a prosecution once embraced was fatally compromised, in an administration in which admitting fault is seen as weakness and in which taking actions that contradict the boss is seen as self-destruction.<\/p>\n \u201cTrump is mad at Pirro because she finally admitted what we made clear in our legal filings all along: Trump\u2019s botched renovation was responsible for the damage, not Davey Hearn,\u201d said Norman L. Eisen a member of Mr. Hearn\u2019s defense team and a co-founder of Democracy Defenders Fund, which has represented people targeted by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n \u201cHer claim that she and her office were previously duped by Interior is nonsense,\u201d he added. \u201cStarting immediately after the arraignment, our motions repeatedly proved that the administration was to blame, not Davey.\u201d<\/p>\n Tim Lauer, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney\u2019s office, declined to comment. \u201cThe filing speaks for itself,\u201d he wrote in an email.<\/p>\n The about-face also underscored a recurrent pattern that has diminished the Justice Department\u2019s once-sterling standing with federal judges and juries \u2014 the rush by Trump- appointed U.S. attorneys across the country to take quick action against those accused by the president of transgressions, even petty ones.<\/p>\n It is now much more common for grand juries around the country, particularly in Washington, to reject indictments brought by the department. In years past, this almost never happened<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last December, grand jurors in Virginia rejected the department\u2019s effort to indict Letitia James<\/a>, the New York attorney general, on mortgage-related charges for the second time in a one-week<\/a> period. Earlier, a jury in the district halted an attempt by Ms. Pirro\u2019s office to prosecute a Justice Department employee who tossed a sandwich at federal officers<\/a>. Around the same time, she thrice tried and failed<\/a> to indict a woman who pushed an F.B.I. agent during a protest.<\/p>\n