US Attorney General Todd Blanche said \u2060on Sunday that \u2060he backs top Washington prosecutor \u2060Jeanine Pirro, who was criticised by US President Donald Trump for the way she handled a case of alleged vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.<\/p>\n
\u201cI absolutely support US Attorney Pirro, as does President Trump,\u201d Blanche said \u200con NBC\u2019s Meet the Press programme.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration fast-tracked a renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool ahead of the nation\u2019s Fourth of July celebrations, at a cost of about US$14.7 million.<\/p>\n
Within weeks an algae bloom developed and material at the bottom of the pool started peeling off. Federal authorities subsequently charged former US Olympian \u2060David Hearn and others with vandalism.<\/p>\n
In a court filing asking for the case against Hearn \u200cto be dismissed, Pirro blamed the Reflecting Pool\u2019s peeling issues on \u201cflawed\u201d work by a contractor and accused the Interior Department of providing incomplete \u200cinformation at first.<\/p>\n
Trump subsequently posted that Pirro should revisit her \u201chastily made decision\u201d to \u2060drop the case.<\/p>\n
Blanche \u2060said he does not fault Trump for being frustrated over the matter, adding that a witness said \u200cthey observed vandalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US Attorney General Todd Blanche said \u2060on Sunday that \u2060he backs top Washington prosecutor \u2060Jeanine Pirro, who was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1152452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5311],"tags":[32,92861,109963,188791,22177,286495,94805,11105,144958,49,978,313496,313497,313495,659,48868,6709,1018],"class_list":["post-1152451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-donald-trump","tag-fourth-of-july","tag-interior-department","tag-jeanine-pirro","tag-justice-department","tag-lincoln-memorial-reflecting-pool","tag-meet-the-press","tag-nbc","tag-todd-blanche","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-us-attorney","tag-us-olympian","tag-us-senate-republicans","tag-usa","tag-vandalism","tag-washington","tag-white-house"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1152451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1152452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1152451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1152451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1152451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}