CNN star Kaitlan Collins has exposed the wild lengths Donald Trump is going to in trying to blame a former Olympic canoeist for the mess his administration made of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
The White House is now pushing to revive its failed case against David Hearn, less than two days after Todd Blanche, Trump’s former defense attorney, was sworn in to formally lead the Justice Department. It remains unclear how exactly that push will play out, given it effectively pits the department against itself.
“If there are charges brought against [Hearn] again, I mean, would you use [U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia] Jeanine Pirro’s filing to fight those charges?” Collins asked Norm Eisen, one of the lawyers who represented the ex-Olympian, David Hearn, during a Tuesday night segment of her show. “Wouldn’t that be the word of the DOJ versus the DOJ?”
Eisen, who previously worked as special counsel under the Obama administration, agreed. “It’s so unbelievable,” he said, laughing. “They said in that filing that there was no evidence beyond a reasonable doubt because the damage was caused by a botched and rushed installation.”
The president, 80, charged ahead with a vainglorious refurb of the D.C. landmark earlier this year as he seeks to remake the nation’s capital in his own image. It did not go well. A total of $16.4 million in no-bid deals for the Reflecting Pool’s “American flag blue” refit went to one company that had never held a federal contract before and another owned by a Trump donor and twice-convicted felon. For weeks, the work left the landmark’s waters a hideous algal green.
Never one to cop to a bad move, Trump blamed anyone but himself for the unexpected shift in color scheme. He chalked up the algal bloom and chunks of the liner that had floated to the water’s surface to damage caused by vandals. His Justice Department goons quickly brought criminal charges against Hearn, 67, accusing the former canoeist of tearing up the pool lining.
That prosecution went about as well as the refurb. Hearn pleaded not guilty on July 9 to “forcefully and violently” ripping up parts of the pool floor, prompting Pirro to actually go and look at the site herself. Three weeks after that, her office was suddenly back in court arguing the damage had in fact been caused by “a rushed and botched installation” by Trump’s contractors on behalf of the Department of the Interior. The judge tossed the case on Thursday.
The president has not taken it well. He said Pirro “folded like an umbrella,” then that she “choked because the judge was really vicious.”
Eisen was clear on Tuesday night just how spectacularly hard Trump’s prosecutors would have to work to get a court to allow them to take another run at the ex-athlete.
“The very first thing that the judge, if charges are brought again, [will say] is the words of the U.S. attorney’s office blaming the Department of the Interior,” he said. “So the outrageousness of it, it won’t stand in a court of law if it comes back, and I assume the reason we read about it today in The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere is because people in the DOJ are as horrified as I am.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House, the Justice Department, and the Department of the Interior for comment on this story.
