PASSING THE BUCK

Trump’s DOJ Watchdog Dodging Reflecting Pool Investigation

The prosecutors who hit one-time Olympian David Hearn on a bogus vandalism charge will not be investigated for potential misconduct—at least not yet.

A Trump-appointed Inspector General says his office will not probe potential prosecutorial misconduct in the DOJ’s reflecting-pool vandalism case involving an ex-Olympian who was cleared of wrongdoing.

Department of Justice Inspector General Don Berthiaume says the issue is simply not for this office. He has instead deferred the matter to the Office of Professional Responsibility, which the Trump administration has largely gutted this term.

MAGA prosecutor Jeanine Pirro, known as “Judge Jeanine” from her Fox News days, secured a grand jury indictment of former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, falsely accusing him of “forcefully and violently” pulling up the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool’s liner.

Hearn was hit with a single count of felony property destruction on July 2—a charge he slammed as bogus, but President Donald Trump seized on as being the cause of his reflecting pool renovation’s green-slime fiasco.

Pirro later sought dismissal after evidence showed the reflecting pool damage was from a “botched installation,” not vandalism. Hearn’s lawyers demanded that Berthiaume and his office investigate possible prosecutorial misconduct, including whether Pirro violated ethical rules when she announced the charges.

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Berthiaume has now passed the buck, referring the allegations against the prosecutors to the OPR, asserting that the matter falls outside his responsibilities, according to the Associated Press.

Hearn’s legal team has raged at the decision, writing in a letter Wednesday that “OPR is no longer a fully functioning entity capable of conducting rigorous oversight.”

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The OPR was created in 1975 after the Nixon Watergate scandal to investigate misconduct within the Justice Department. However, Hearn’s lawyers write that the Trump administration has depleted the OPR by roughly 50 percent.

Hearn’s legal team argues that the case falls “squarely within” the inspector general’s investigative function. They alleged that the DOJ and Interior Department’s handling of the vandalism case was riddled with “numerous potential crimes, including witness tampering, subornation of perjury, obstruction of justice, and criminal civil rights violations.”

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