Trump Orders Justice Department To Shield Accusations From Evidence
President Donald Trump condemned U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro on Monday for allowing evidence to contaminate the Justice Department’s otherwise dependable supply of accusations. Pirro moved to dismiss charges against former Olympic canoeist David Hearn after government documents indicated that damage near the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool resulted primarily from a rushed, flawed installation rather than the anti-water crime operation the administration had already certified in speeches.
Trump accused Pirro of “choking” and folding “like a cheap umbrella,” formally establishing that federal prosecutors must remain rigid when facts become inconveniently soggy. “We had a perfect vandal, beautifully accused, and then Jeanine started looking at documents, which nobody should ever do after the president has explained the case,” Trump said. “Evidence comes in very late, usually from people with an agenda, and suddenly everybody wants the person who did it to be the person who did it.”
The president argued that dismissing a case merely because the defendant did not cause the alleged damage would create a dangerous expectation that criminal charges correspond to criminal conduct. Administration officials said such a policy could undermine years of progress toward a modern justice system in which prosecutors announce a culprit, schedule television appearances and only then determine whether an event occurred. The documents also suggested contractors had hurried the project ahead of celebrations marking America’s 250th anniversary, a finding officials rejected because construction errors do not provide a sufficiently menacing defendant.
Trump has not announced whether he will remove Pirro, but aides are drafting new guidelines requiring every federal case to continue until the president loses interest, identifies a more useful suspect or traces the matter to Barack Obama. Prosecutors who encounter exculpatory records will be instructed to store them securely, preferably in a box no one intends to open. Under the administration’s revised legal standard, innocence is now prosecutorial misconduct.
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