U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro lost her patience when reporters kept pressing her about the botched Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool case.
She repeatedly refused to answer questions about the embarrassing saga, likely because of how the vandalism case played out.
Jeanine Pirro avoids questions about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool
Pirro, 75, held a press conference on Wednesday, September 9, to discuss cryptocurrency scams her office now pursues.
Per The Daily Beast, she refused to call on a reporter she apparently expected to ask about the Reflecting Pool.
When another reporter did raise the issue, Pirro quickly shut it down by saying, “Next — not on the Pool.”
But soon, her frustration became quite apparent when one reporter directly asked, “Can I ask you about the Reflecting Pool?”
“No! And no! Who wants to know about this? How many times do I have to say no?” she exclaimed.
Pirro then tried to steer the press conference back toward the cryptocurrency cases and when another reporter returned to the Reflecting Pool fiasco, she once again refused to engage.
“No, I’m not going there. Don’t even go there,” she said. “That’s why I didn’t call you. You and I have this relationship and I’m not going there. Anyone else?”
Why did Jeanine Pirro avoid the Reflecting Pool case?
Her response came after fallout over a case that initially centered on former Olympic canoeist David Hearn. At first, Pirro and her office accused Hearn of damaging the pool’s liner and pursued felony charges against him.
The case later unraveled after officials acknowledged that the damage came from a “rushed and flawed” installation by a contractor hired by Trump’s administration. She ultimately had to admit that there was no evidence to claim that Hearn had vandalized the pool.
According to The Daily Beast’s August 5 report, there was a fierce clash between Pirro and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. She accused the official of misleading Donald Trump about the source of the damage and reportedly arrived with boxes of evidence to show that Burgum’s department knew about the installation problems.
However, Trump publicly accused Pirro of not following the vandalism case and CNN reported that he “read her the riot act” after she abandoned the prosecution.
“Well, I just think she was totally wrong,” Trump said. “It was actually, in my opinion, it was major vandalism and I told her I was not happy.”