The Pirro Pivot
In one area the Trump administration is remarkably successful. It is hard to imagine another national government where more unqualified, incompetent, and corrupt people have been assembled in one place. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Pete Hegseth take note.
Pictured above is Jeanine Perro, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, one of the most important federal prosecutors in the Department of Justice. Perro auditioned for her post in the usual Trump way. It is true that Pirro was Westchester County’s first female judge and district attorney. But that was two decades ago. Her key qualification for a post in the Trump administration was her longtime service as a Fox Channel personality hosting Justice with Judge Jeanine and co-hosting The Five. Pirro is also a best-selling author. One of her titles, “Liars, Leakers, and Liberals: The Case Against the Trump Conspiracy,” surely caught Trump’s eye.
Since her appointment Pirro has consistently aligned her office with Trump’s aggressive law-and-order directives, specifically implementing the federal crime crackdown in D.C. Pirro publicly defended and credited Trump’s federal law enforcement enhancements for lowering crime statistics in the nation’s capital, stating that the administration brought much-needed safety after previous high homicide rates.
In this video from July 2, 2026, Perro is holding a news conference to announce the indictment of David Hearn, a Maryland resident, charging he vandalized the famous Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the object of a high-priority renovation directed by Trump himself. Pirro told reporters that Hearn was seen by National Park Service employees making a “forcefully and violently” effort to rip up the pool liner with his bare hands. When reporters pressed her for details and asked how she would prove the damage exceeded the $1,000 felony threshold, Pirro snapped at the press and repeatedly clashed with reporters questioning the validity of the case.
Pirro had presented her case to a D.C. grand jury and personally signed the indictment. The charge carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison upon conviction. Hearn, 67, competed for the United States as a canoeist in 1992, 1996 and 2000 Summer Olympics.
In the month that followed Donald Trump and the Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, who supervises the National Park Service and is responsible for the pool, insisted that the damage involved “multiple gashes” by vandals, first and foremost Hearn. Hearn insisted that all he did was pick up a piece of material floating in the water, which had peeled off from the bottom of the pool. Burgum said the pool suffered “multiple gashes” to the industrial liner that add up to 350 feet of damage. He said Interior Department employees had witnessed Hearn’s actions. In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Burgum said that the same contractor who installed the lining will repair it and that the peeling liner had nothing to do with faulty workmanship.
Fast forward to Friday, July 31. Jeanine Perro was nowhere to be seen late in the afternoon, when the United States Department of Justice dropped off a 20-page document at the D.C. Superior Court. No news conference, no press release. This is known as “taking out the garbage.” You dump into public view something you hope will draw little or no notice, figuring late on a Friday reporters and the general public will be focused on the upcoming weekend and not paying too much attention. “Government’s Motion to Dismiss the Indictment” is the title. One of Pirro’s assistants prepared the dismissal motion, although the motion was submitted on her behalf.
The motion says that after the indictment came down the Interior Department (DOI) provided additional documents to the U.S. attorney’s office “indicating that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings.” The DOJ said it “first became aware of information showing that the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism” after reviewing more documents. “Had DOI been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment.”
In other words, never mind.
The DOJ said when it presented the case to the grand jury, it was “not in possession of any information from DOI indicating that any damage to the Reflecting Pool was caused by anything other than the actions of the defendant and other vandals who damaged the pool’s lining.” The filing continues, “it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt.”
So why did Pirro pivot? Why not just continue the case and hope it will fade away in the year or two it would take to get before a jury? After all, that is what the boss in the Oval Office clearly wanted. I can only speculate that Pirro is thinking about her future.
Presenting a case to a grand jury built on incomplete or misleading information, without a proper investigation, could invite sanctions for filing a frivolous proceeding. Pirro may be planning on returning to her Fox platform at the end of the Trump administration. But even Fox might look askance at hiring a commentator who had been disciplined or even disbarred for unethical behavior.
Pirro might be looking for a new job sooner than she planned. The boss is not happy. In a social media post, Trump writes, “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro… it was a pure case of VANDALISM.”
One would think Hearn would have some recourse here for what was done to his reputation and for what his defense may have cost. Think again. Statute and case law make it virtually impossible to recover against government officials no matter how outrageous their actions. He might be able to make a claim to recover his legal fees. But that is still an uphill battle.
Maybe he should sell the film rights. Or write a book. Maybe Pirro can give him some advice along those lines.
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