(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Trump refuses to drop his petty Reflecting Pool vendetta [1] ['Lisa Needham'] Date: 2026-08-12 Remember when the Justice Department was an actual agency rather than President Donald Trump’s personal revenge machine? Well, those days are long gone. In the latest development, Trump is demanding that the DOJ find a different way to charge former Olympian David Hearn with felonious touching of the crappy liner Trump’s pool boy installed in the Reflecting Pool. Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn and his attorney Norm Eisen are seen on July 9. AP Sure, Trump already admitted that his pool boy screwed it up, but what do facts matter when Trump wants the DOJ to do something? Trump is still mad that U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro dropped the case, so now White House officials are pestering the DOJ to charge Hearn again—which would be extremely bad. Here’s the thing: Pirro’s under-the-wheels motion to dismiss went into great detail about how Hearn could not be saddled with charges for a host of reasons. First, it explains that the Interior Department lied to her—how very dare they—and that upon inspecting the damage, it was clearly not caused by Hearn. Pirro explained that a photo ostensibly showing the damage from Hearn violently ripping up a piece of the pool was, well, not a picture of that at all. The picture’s metadata shows it was taken before Hearn allegedly did a great violence to the pool boy’s liner. The Interior Department also provided documents showing that the installation was rushed and flawed and that the lining had failed multiple times. Similarly, a quality control inspector told Trump’s pool boy way back in May that the lining was blistering and needed to be repaired. The National Park Service was alerted to the peeling on June 11—and there’s a whole email about it and everything—several days before Hearn’s monstrous act of antifa-ing the Reflecting Pool. Related | Trump finally admits his pool guy screwed up the Reflecting Pool As Norm Eisen, one of Hearn’s attorneys, told the Wall Street Journal, bringing a new prosecution of Hearn “would mark a shocking first: Bringing back from the dead a case that the DOJ lost by its own admission that it lacked the evidence to convict. This would add another bizarre turn to a sad chapter in the DOJ’s history—and further harass an innocent man.” But Trump actually thinks that, just because he hates Eisen for unrelated reasons, Hearn is guilty because he is represented by a “TRUMP DERANGED SLEAZEBAG.” The DOJ used to be independent and didn’t charge people based on whether the president likes their attorney or not, but under newly crowned Attorney General Todd Blanche, this is the new normal. Blanche and the DOJ stand ready to help Trump hurt people at any time and for any reason—and it’s going to take us years to repair this travesty. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/8/12/800083354/courts/trump-refuses-to-drop-petty-reflecting-pool-vendetta/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/