Tyler Pager, Glenn Thrush and Katie Rogers
Washington: Jeanine Pirro had had it up to here with Doug Burgum. The famously voluble US attorney for the District of Columbia strode into the Oval Office late on Monday (US time) with her future on the line and the interior secretary, whom she privately called an incompetent liar, in her crosshairs.
A few hours earlier – in front of the cameras, from the Resolute Desk – President Donald Trump had accused Pirro, an ally and friend from New York going back decades, of “folding like an umbrella” and “choking” after she withdrew charges against a man accused of destroying the lining of his beloved but shoddily renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Why was he so angry at her? Because Pirro had dared to publicly demolish one of his most cherished narratives, promoted by Burgum, that vandals — and not a contractor hired by the Interior Department to do a rushed job – had defaced a Washington landmark.
Trump raged against Pirro in private on Monday. Then he raged a little to reporters. Rumours she would be fired burbled through West Wing. Then he raged a little bit more before hosting a high-drama, face-to-face meeting with Pirro at the White House, worthy of two decorated veterans of confrontational reality TV.
Burgum had been invited too, so Pirro came prepared. She entered the White House from the West Executive driveway in a bright red blazer that matched her fight-back mood, schlepping a white box containing evidence, plus a black box with documents, on wheels.
Waiting for her in the Oval Office, along with the president: Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and David Warrington, the White House counsel.
After about an hour of intense back and forth, Pirro emerged with her job intact, for now.
During the meeting, Pirro, her voice raised at times, directly confronted Burgum, accusing him of misleading the president. She made the case that Burgum had promoted a self-serving cover story to conceal his own missteps.
Burgum spoke less but did his best to defend himself, according to a person briefed on the exchange who requested anonymity to discuss internal conversations.
Trump seemed considerably less angry by day’s end, the person said.
Spokespeople for the White House, Pirro and Burgum did not respond to requests for comment.
This account, based on interviews with several people with knowledge of the events, demonstrated a core truth of Trump’s second term: anyone willing to contradict the president is in trouble, even if the dissenter happens to be a family friend who has faithfully executed his prosecutorial agenda over the years.
The saga began on July 2, when a fired-up Pirro appeared before members of the news media to announce that her office had indicted David Hearn, 67, a former Olympic canoeist, on a single count of felony vandalism after he had been observed damaging the pool lining.
“This is not only a priority for the president, but for myself,” Pirro said, adding, “We will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hearn willfully destroyed property.”
She did not. Last Friday, Pirro beat a humbling prosecutorial retreat in a 20-page court filing, admitting that her fast-track July indictment of the three-time Olympian had been based on false assumptions and incomplete evidence.
The document amounted to an indictment of sorts of Burgum, the contractor hired to repair the pool, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, and US Park Police officials.
Pirro’s filing suggested that Burgum had committed the twofold sin of failing to competently oversee the renovation, then prodding Trump to accept the vandals-did-it story. Pirro said that her staff had relied almost exclusively on claims by Interior Department officials that extensive damage to the lining was caused by Hearn and other vandals who were observed tugging at or removing pieces of material from the wall.
After reviewing thousands of pages of evidence, she concluded the department had rushed and botched the renovation, and that bad information from Park Police officials had led her to cite “tremendous evidence” against Hearn that did not exist.
Pirro knew full well that her U-turn could infuriate Trump, but she decided to cram her filing with enough evidence to decisively disprove Burgum’s claims.
She gave the White House a heads-up last week before filing the motion to dismiss the charge against Hearn in court, although it was not clear if Trump was briefed, according to people familiar with the situation who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Ominous signals from Trump began to emerge on Saturday morning, a day after Pirro filed her motion.
“I disagree 100 per cent with Jeanine Pirro,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM.” He added, “There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!”
Burgum took to social media to defend himself soon afterwards. His staff “provided the US attorney’s office expert and eyewitness testimony to the damage done by vandals and provided every piece of evidence they asked for in the requested timeline detailing each area of damage at the pool”, he wrote.
Trump seems at first to have taken Burgum’s side and grew steadily angrier at Pirro as the weekend ground on.
By mid-Monday, he pounced when asked a Pirro question at a press availability in the Oval Office, saying he was disappointed and accusing Pirro of being too afraid to present the case to the judge in the Hearn case.
Notably, he did not answer a question from a reporter about Pirro’s future employment.
Why Pirro, who knows Trump’s personality and trigger points better than almost anyone outside his family, was willing to risk the president’s wrath remains somewhat unclear.
After reviewing thousands of pages of evidence over the past few weeks – much of it from Hearn’s defence team – Pirro determined the Hearn indictment needed to be rescinded before it was thrown out of court, according to two people close to the situation.
Her critics have questioned whether her motive was nearly so straightforward or altruistic.
They suggest that Pirro’s decision to withdraw the indictment was self-protective: She might be trying to head off disciplinary action that could result if grand jury testimony or other internal materials are made public.
Hearn’s lawyers said she was guilty of what she had accused Burgum of doing – rushing to take an action to appease her boss – and that she had ample access, before indicting Hearn, to evidence showing that the damage had been caused by the contractor.
The contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, has not responded to queries about the case, but a June 21 statement on the company’s website says there are “some areas” of the pool that require repairs.
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