(CNN) — President Donald Trump laid into U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro at a White House meeting the evening of Aug. 3 over a court filing that blamed the Reflecting Pool damage on shoddy workmanship rather than vandalism, according to two people familiar with the intense discussion.
The seemingly botched Reflecting Pool renovation and subsequent vandalism charges have created a deep divide between Pirro and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who was also at the meeting, according to people familiar with the dynamic. While Trump has privately lambasted Pirro, he stopped short of firing her or asking for her resignation on Aug. 3, sources told CNN.
The D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office decided to drop the case that accused an ex-Olympian of ripping up some of the pool lining, with Pirro’s prosecutors saying in court they believed they had been misled by the Interior Department until recent days, when Burgum’s staff finally turned over records showing the pool had significant damage long before Olympic canoeist David Hearn visited the pool, according to court records.
Privately, Pirro has blasted Burgum’s staff to senior aides in the West Wing and put the blame squarely on Interior for failing to arm her with the evidence — before she presented the case — that exposed the case wasn’t prosecutable, according to the people familiar with the matter. Pirro arrived at the White House with boxes of evidence to back up her claims that the damage at the reflecting pool was caused by shoddy workmanship, not vandalism, according to another person with knowledge of the meeting.
Pirro herself made the call to drop the case and also preemptively discussed her plans to dismiss it with officials in both the Justice Department and the White House, people familiar with the inner workings of the U.S. Attorney’s Office told CNN. Her office declined to comment.
The decision put the Interior Department on the defensive and irritated Burgum and his team, who believed that explicitly blaming the department in the legal filing was unnecessarily antagonistic, one of the people familiar with dynamic said. They have also questioned why Pirro did not first seek to address her concerns in private, arguing she instead chose to blindside Trump and other top officials by publicly airing the case’s shortcomings.
That person added that the president has been increasingly sensitive to any criticism around the Reflecting Pool, given his personal investment in a project that he views partly as a referendum on his own skill as a developer.
The White House and Interior Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump’s frustration towards Pirro was palpable Monday night during the meeting, where Trump yelled at Pirro and “read her the riot act,” according to two sources briefed on the meeting. While White House officials said that Pirro was still on thin ice, multiple sources familiar with the relationship said they believe Pirro is safe, for now, citing her years-long relationship with Trump.
“It would be hard for him to fire her. He likes her and he’s not the same impulsive guy he was during the first term,” one of the sources said, while still noting that “anything can happen.”
Trump on Tuesday night doubled down on his criticism of Pirro, saying he believes “she’s totally wrong” over the handling of the case, while declining to say whether she will remain in the role.
“Well, I just think she is totally wrong,” Trump told reporters before departing Los Angeles for Las Vegas.
Trump added that he had confronted Pirro over the issue: “And I told her I was not happy.”
Asked whether Pirro would remain as U.S. attorney, Trump declined to commit either way. “I haven’t made a determination,” he said.
An office in turmoil
Since becoming D.C.’s U.S. Attorney 15 months ago, Pirro has been forced onto a tightrope as Trump has used law enforcement in D.C. to set the political tone of his administration.
During her tenure, Trump surged federal law enforcement into the nation’s capital city, prompting Pirro’s office to field exponentially more criminal cases in court. His Justice Department leadership also fired many experienced prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office because they had worked on January 6 Capitol riot cases or previous Trump prosecutions.
Grand juries and trial juries also have regularly rejected prosecutors’ arguments in D.C.’s federal court — an apparent referendum on the Trump administration’s approach.
“There has been a significant strain on both the manpower and the morale of the criminal division. You’ve seen that play out right now. That these cases are being brought and they’re falling apart,” said Kevin Owen, an attorney who represents several former D.C.-based federal prosecutors who were fired early in this Trump administration.
Still, Pirro has steadied parts of her U.S. Attorney’s Office, including the D.C. Superior Court section of prosecutors, which handled the Reflecting Pool cases. At times, she has helped her career prosecutors in high-profile cases by calling acting Attorney General Todd Blanche directly to gain support for their investigative work, one source said.
In the Reflecting Pool case, Pirro has backed the long-time career prosecutor who signed the filing to dismiss the case against the Olympian.
Five sources familiar with the office say she and others there respect the prosecutor, Michael Spence, a former homicide prosecutor who now leads the part of the office responsible for D.C. Superior Court — or local, criminal cases.
Within the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the case was initially seen as one prosecutors could legally pursue because of the record Pirro’s office had of testimony from Park Police regarding the Reflecting Pool damage. Prosecutors debated — before charges were filed — whether the case should be in federal or Superior Court, some of the sources said.
Ultimately, the case received a Superior Court grand jury’s approval just before Independence Day, and had been moving through court quickly. On July 17, Pirro visited the then-drained Reflecting Pool with others. After that visit, prosecutors began demanding more information from the Interior Department, court records say.
Hearn’s lawyers late Tuesday asked for the D.C. Superior Court dismiss the case against him with prejudice so it may never be brought again, a step beyond what Pirro’s office has asked the court to do.
They also asked for records of how Pirro’s office brought the case. A Superior Court judge has scheduled a hearing for September.
“The government’s internal blame game is not accountability. It’s the opposite,” Michael Bromwich, a lawyer for Hearn, said. “We have many options and we will determine which of them best serves the interests of Mr. Hearn in vindicating his good name.”
Trump and Pirro, both New Yorkers, have known each other for decades. Pirro was staunchly behind Trump while she was previously a host at Fox News and, notably, after the 2020 election when she repeated his debunked claims that the election was stolen from him.
Several times, Pirro has shocked the legal community with her attempts to appease Trump. She has detailed some close staffers to work on the highly political cases that are Trump priorities, largely walling them off from the rest of the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Over the past year, Pirro has attempted unsuccessfully to indict sitting members of Congress for a video they taped that courts have found was First Amendment-protected speech. She also has tried to investigate former Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, and criticized the chief judge of the D.C. District Court for shutting down a related subpoena.
Yet career prosecutors in her office have said they appreciate her aggressive approach to prosecuting violent crime and her legal chops as a former district attorney in New York state. And she continues to meet with judges privately — it’s common practice for US Attorneys to maintain a relationship with the bench — in both the D.C. Superior Court and D.C.’s federal District Court, sources say.
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