Former Fox host Jeanine Pirro announced the Justice Department was dropping charges against Olympian David Hearn for vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after an investigation found all of the problems with the pool came from a botched installation. As one reporter noted, this is merely one of many places around Washington, D.C. tourists can find destruction at the hands of President Donald Trump.
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In a discussion with Hearn’s lawyer, Norm Eisen, the MS NOW panel explained that the attack on Hearn was part of a larger problem with the Justice Department using its power to follow Trump’s demands. Trump maintains that the pool was damaged by vandals, but he’s now in conflict with his own FBI and DOJ. He also alleged there was a 200-350 “foot” or sometimes “yard” gash in the lining. After draining the pool, that has yet to be found.
Eisen disputed Pirro’s claim that they didn’t have evidence disproving the vandalism allegations at the time the DOJ charged Hearn. Eisen said he used the DOJ’s “own evidence and other photographs” to show “the section of the reflecting pool that they claimed Davey had damaged was exactly the same in photographs before and after he touched it.”
He said that they’re “gratified” that the DOJ confessed it was the botched installation to blame. But it’s part of a larger question: “What have we come to as a country where under Todd Blanche, Jeanine Pirro and Donald Trump, innocent people like Davey Hearn can be targeted?”
“Morning Joe” co-host Jonathan Lemire said that the Reflecting Pool situation “has become a national joke, frankly, a national embarrassment. But this is more than just a no-bid contract. This is the president of the United States and his Justice Department, and Todd Blanche, is soon to be permanent attorney general, sort of, carrying out the president’s whims and wishes.”
Political analyst and New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay agreed that Trump “has totally weaponized the Justice Department — has inverted the mission.”
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The politics of the ordeal was interesting because “corruption can be hard” to get Americans to care about. “Even lies can be hard to, kind of, drive home the meaning of it, the consequences to just ordinary voters. But this is a case where that’s not true because everybody in America can see that it is President Trump’s fault, that he has destroyed the Reflecting Pool, just like they saw the damage to the White House. And so that’s the kind of corruption that you can touch, taste, feel, that in addition to going after a private citizen in Davey Hearn.”
She noted that it was different than Trump going after his political foes like James Comey and Letitia James. Hearn was nothing more than a regular American who stuck his hand in the pool. Gay related it to the targeting of the two election workers in Georgia who were targeted by Trump and Rudy Giuliani.
“I mean, Americans don’t like bullies, and they don’t like liars. And this is a case where you can just see very clearly that the president is lying,” Gay continued. “You have evidence that you can, kind of, live in. And now there’s, I mean, people who are visitors to Washington, D.C. are, you know, talking about how they’re essentially on a tour of Donald Trump’s damage to the nation’s capital. It’s embarrassing.”
She added that anyone who is “not in the MAGA cult is going to realize, I can’t take this seriously. It’s dark, but it’s going to be hard for him to get out of this one.”
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