Trump Meets With Pirro After Publicly Blasting Her

Jeanine Pirro got an Oval Office summons Monday, just hours after President Trump publicly blasted her handling of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool case, sources tell the New York Times. The US attorney for Washington, DC, met with Trump at the White House but left with her job intact, according to people briefed on the meeting; she neither resigned nor was fired. Earlier that day, Trump told reporters Pirro "choked" and "folded like an umbrella" when she moved to drop a felony vandalism charge against former Olympic canoeist David Hearn. Sources previously told CNN and ABC News Trump was considering removing Pirro over the matter.

Pirro's court filing undercut Trump's repeated claims that peeling and damage at the Reflecting Pool were caused by "vandal thugs." She said prosecutors had been misled by the Interior Department and that the problems stemmed from rushed, faulty contract work, not knife-wielding vandals. Prosecutors are also dismissing lesser property-damage charges against three other defendants. Trump, joined in his criticism by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, insisted Monday there "was vandalism" and called Pirro's reversal the real injustice, even as he conceded he was "not 100% thrilled with the contractor" on what he described as one of his signature beautification projects.