Aug. 7 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Friday urged U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro to reinstall charges against several people accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Pirro, a long-time Trump ally, has been in hot water with the president since admitting last week that damage to the pool was due to a “botched installation and not vandalism.”
On Friday, Trump said Pirro should “re-visit her hastily made decision.”
“Now that people are able to see it up close, they are reporting pure VANDALISM at The Reflecting Pool,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
A D.C. judge on Thursday dismissed the case against the most prominent of the defendants, Olympian David Hearn, 67, who faced 10 years in prison on a felony charge.
Defense attorneys have requested the dismissal of misdemeanor charges against three other people accused of vandalism.
Hearn and the other defendants were indicted on accusations that they purposefully ripped up pieces of the recently-installed blue sealant from the pool’s bottom.
But in court filings, Pirro’s office said she had been misled by the Interior Department into believing they had caused “nearly all of the damage” to the pool.
“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool,” Trump posted on Truth Social the following day. “I don’t know what she was thinking?”
Renovating the reflecting pool cost the government nearly $15 million in a no-bid contract.
In court filings, Pirro said the “botched” renovation “was the result of a flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, and the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration.”
“Davey Hearn is innocent and today’s dismissal reflects that simple fact,” the Olympian’s lawyers said in a statement on Thursday.
“But this case never should’ve been brought in the first place,” they added. “The Department of Justice’s decision to seek an indictment was a miscarriage of justice.”