Judge Demands Answers From DOJ For Refusing To Dismiss Reflecting Pool Case With Prejudice
from the hi-we're-from-the-'how-high'-department dept
There are multiple things this administration is incapable of doing: winning wars, curbing inflation, not acting like Nazis, wearing shoes that fit them, etc. But if there’s one thing it’s most known for, it’s the unwillingness to take a loss and move on.
That’s why the DOJ is still trying to imprison/jettison into a war-torn African nation its first spectacular failure: Kilmar Abrego-Garcia. And that’s why — multiple attempts and several million dollars later — Trump is still pretending what happened to the Lincoln Reflecting Pool were acts of vandalism, rather than the shoddy work of his preferred contractors. Those facts are on the permanent record, supplied by his own DOJ and his handpicked US Attorney (and former Fox News personality, natch) Jeanine Pirro.
The DOJ claimed Doug Burgum’s Interior Department lied to it when it moved to dismiss federal vandalism charges against former Olympian David Hearn. To his credit(?), Burgum has been nothing if not consistent. Burgum continued to spread the lies. And Trump has continued to double-down on his bogus “vandals” claims since the DOJ dropped the charges.
The continuing problems aren’t limited to Burgum’s and Trump’s constant lies. The main problem for David Hearn is that the DOJ can always try to run him through the court system again. While the DOJ made it clear any damage was due to poor workmanship, it refused to dismiss the charges with prejudice — something that would have prevented the DOJ from re-charging Hearn in response to White House pressure and/or a series of hirings/firings meant to replace Pirro with someone more sycophantic.
While the DOJ may have an infinite amount of time and money to blow on stroking off Trump’s revenge fantasies, its lawyers have been learning repeatedly that federal judges have a finite amount of patience for their constant bullshit.
Hearn’s legal team has refused to let this case go simply because the DOJ has refused to let this case go. It has asked the court to bring the DOJ back to explain why it won’t dismiss the charges with prejudice, even after publicly admitting any alleged “vandalism” was simply the end result of shitty pool repair work.
The DOJ still refuses to take this step, which has naturally resulted in DOJ lawyers being berated by yet another exasperated federal judge:
Superior Court Judge Todd Edelman asked assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Spence how he was supposed to look at the president’s statements about David Hearn, one of his attorneys and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro as “anything other than [Trump] pressuring your office, your boss and the three of you to charge Mr. Hearn, recharge Mr. Hearn with what you had decided to be a meritless prosecution.”
“Isn’t this a unique threat of meritless re-prosecution?” Edelman said.
You’ll notice it’s US Attorney Michael Spence now handling this case, since Pirro has been sidelined (but not officially fired) for refusing to engage in a malicious prosecution on Trump’s behalf. In return for Pirro momentarily demonstrating better judgment and displaying some respect for her office, Trump has repeatedly maligned her in public comments and Truth Social posts.
That leaves Spence with nothing but the dirtiest of dirty work — ensuring the Hearn prosecution remains on life support until Oval Office pressure forces him to move forward with “meritless re-prosecution,” to quote Judge Edelman.
Spence had nowhere to go. Having been painted into the corner by the administration that currently employs him, all he could do was offer up a weak non-rebuttal that kind of throws Trump under the Truth Social bus he’s driving, while being as noncommittal as possible about the future of the Hearn prosecution:
Spence replied only that Trump’s statements “speak for themselves,” while also arguing it was premature to discuss that hypothetical notion because no further grand jury action had happened.
Bro, this discussion isn’t “premature.” Rights are there to be protected, rather than just vindicated after the fact. The court isn’t obligated to allow the DOJ to engage in a malicious re-prosecution before it can draw inferences from the administration’s actions and statements. Courts aren’t just there to clean up the messes the other branches make. They can also block the government from moving ahead with planned rights violations.
US Attorney Spence is saying as little as he can in hopes of saving a job that’s probably not worth having. The future will only hold worse things for anyone who thinks it’s possible to appease both Trump and an apparently never-ending series of annoyed federal judges. 30 seconds of boiler plate editing is all it would take to end the Hearn saga for good. But Spence — and the cowards who work with him — will never close this case because Trump won’t be happy until he’s put someone — anyone! — in jail for botching a job he’d spent months bragging about.
Filed Under: asshats, david hearn, doi, doj, doug burgum, interior department, jeanine pirro, malicious prosecution, refelecting pool, trump administration
Companies: atlantic industrial coatings, greenwater solutions
Comments on “Judge Demands Answers From DOJ For Refusing To Dismiss Reflecting Pool Case With Prejudice”
Somebody should tell the DoJ that doing something without prejudice is kind of woke.
Re:
You win ten Internets today, but please don’t go there.
Libs without prejudices terminate the unjust prosecution with prejudice. Conservatives terminate the defendant with extreme prejudice.
Judge who could have dismissed this case with prejudice but decided not to for shits and giggles, demands anybody else except him answer for dismissing this case without prejudice.
Re:
I believe the angle here is that if the DOJ requests to dismiss with prejudice, they’re eliminating their ability to recharge the defendant and they can’t appeal their own voluntary action. But if the judge dismisses with prejudice, the DOJ can appeal that ruling.
Re: Re:
Which means that if the judge chooses to dismiss with prejudice after the DOJ requests to dismiss without prejudice, this means a whole lot more work for him right away because he cannot just enter “request for dismissal granted” into the record but has to write a complete legal reasoning for his decision to enter a verdict of his own.
This was notably what happened when the DOJ tried dismissing the bribery and fraud case against Eric Adams in order to score political points and have ongoing leverage against him.
Without prosecutor, the judge had no option but to dismiss, but he did dismiss with prejudice in order to at least limit the extent of the corruption the Trump administration was able to get out of the case. And, of course, he did have to make a pretty appeal-proof reasoning to justify that change.
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The DOJ had already requested to voluntarily dismiss it without prejudice when the judge ruled to allow them to dismiss without prejudice. Anything which begins with “what if the DOJ voluntarily dismissed it with prejudice” is entirely irrelevant, because they didn’t.
But let’s ignore ojective reality and substitute your own where the poor, helpless, misunderstood judge did dismiss it with prejudice, and then the government appealed, which would of course be a terrible thing. What would be the outcome of this terrible thing? In one case, the appeals court wouldn’t overturn and it would remain dismissed with prejudice, which is better than what we have. In the other case, it is overturned and dismissed without prejudice, the literal exact situation we are in right now. So no, I’m not accepting your reality where the judge is a well-meaning blithering idiot.
Remember kids, “the angle” is to never give a diabetic person insulin, because if you give them insulin now then they may live long enough for somebody else to deprive them of insulin in the future. Instead, you should deprive them of insulin personally right now in order to prevent somebody else from hypothetically depriving them of insulin in the future.
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But you’re missing the context of my comment. It was in response to someone not understanding why the judge wanted the DOJ to request such a dismissal with prejudice, which is why the hypothetical scenario “if the the DOJ voluntarily dismissed it with prejudice” is relevant.
Ask the judge. He seems to think it would be better if the DOJ did request the dismissal with prejudice.
You’re missing the scenario where the judge dismisses with prejudice and grandpa diaperdump gets angry and orders the DOJ to appeal and continue to rack up costs and time for the defendant.
I’m not suggesting he’s an idiot. I’m suggesting he doesn’t want to play games with the DOJ recharging or appealing a dismissal because he sees that there’s no fucking case here, but there is a vindictive administration hellbent on destroying lives for the purposes of propaganda dumping on Truth Social to the loyal followers.
Lawyers aren’t cheap. Being charged isn’t a cakewalk, even if you eventually go free. You’re acting like the defendant who the government has otherwise announced didn’t do anything wrong should still weather the whims of angry assholes who want a victim to string up for the views and clicks.
The angle is the DOJ has burned its credibility in court a thousand times over and isn’t to be trusted. It could have requested dismissal with prejudice after it admitted there is no case but it chose not to. You’re attacking the wrong party.
I was under the impression that a judge had the ability to dismiss a case with prejudice. How is this one different?
Re:
He does, but he’s also faced with the problem that if he does over the DoJ’s objections the Supreme Court at least is likely to rule that he overstepped his authority because the record doesn’t contain any statements by the DoJ that they will re-prosecute and the mere possibility that they could re-prosecute isn’t sufficient to justify overruling the DoJ’s objections.
Reflections on thought-control.
With apologies for ripping this one phrase out of context, it got me thinking:
In material terms, what does Trump achieve with this quixotic crusade? This is not a question that requires any inside information to answer: It is a question of observed behavior and substantial effects.
If Trump keeps this up for long enough, it’ll gaslight some people into believing that they themselves must be crazy. After all, no President of the United States could be this crazy. Don’t believe your lying eyes.
It’ll make others feel paralyzed with helplessness. If a Federal judge can’t stop Trump from senselessly grinding his axe on the ass of a completely innocent person, it means that Trump can do anything, no one can stop him, and you can do nothing. It is consistent with the tactics common to schoolyard bullies, abusive parents, and adult intimate partner abusers. Give up. It’s hopeless. Daddy’s gonna do whatever he wants, and get whatever he wants. Shut the fuck up, and pray that you can avoid pissing him off.
It lets Trump deny that he himself ruined the Reflecting Pool—while he plays the victim over the heinous vandalism of his remade Reflecting Pool, done by an innocent scapegoat whom he relentlessly attacks. Any of us could be David Hearn; he is our proxy. This fits neatly into Trump’s habituated, generalized, patent strategy of government by DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender). Indeed, DARVO is an unofficial plank of the Trumped-up Republican Party’s platform.
All of the substantial effects here hew to coercive thought-control. None of the observed behavior has any relevance to the actual Reflecting Pool.
Even worse
Well, we still remember Epstein and the fact that this administration is not prosecuting rich child rapists. Also, it’s expensive as fuck in the US because of the orange fucktard.
The long line sycophantic centipedes attached to the orange anus of Donny are so frightened of him that they’ll do anything to avoid his screaming baby tantrums.
Federal judge?
Judges of the DC Superior Court aren’t federal judges.
Twenty-five years after, “They hate our freedom!”
This comment is about Vladimir Putin.
Twenty-five years ago, I heard many sloganeering kinds of truisms. “They hate our freedom! They hate our way of life! This is a war of civilizations.”
I doubt that any of those was ever true of Osama bin Laden.
I hold no brief for Osama—a supporter and a client of ultraviolent, brutally oppressive theocracies. Nor am I a scholarly expert about Osama. From an “I was there, I remember” perspective on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, I simply note that I have never seen any evidence that any of those truisms was actually true of Osama.
Insofar as I am aware, Osama never showed any interest in American domestic affairs per se—not except incidentally to his very keen interest in American policies in the Middle East. Osama hated the Saudi royal family, whom he saw as corrupt American puppets unworthy of the territory that contains Mecca and Medina. Osama hated American support for Zionism, of course—an issue of legit regional interest to Arabs in the Middle East. I’ve never seen any evidence that Osama was so silly as to fancy changing American domestic law and American culture, as goals in themselves. If I am mistaken, an expert in Osama’s biography may feel free to correct me (with academic-style citations to reliable sources on Osama, and not with bare quotes of the Koran or Hadiths or a rant about the House of Islam).
However, there is a foreign actor who has shown great interest in meddling in American domestic affairs.
To fly airplanes into buildings seems to me like a desperation play. It killed a few thousand people, which was a tragedy for those people and for their families and friends. It caused billions of dollars in damage, which some rich folks probably see as more tragic. It trolled American dumbasses, incidentally, into embracing the Unamerican “PATRIOT Act”—an unholy abomination against American freedom, which every American patriot still must demand to repeal. It somehow made George W. Bush popular, which was revolting—and Bush parlayed this into a propaganda pretext for aggressive warfare. It was signally unsuccessful at deterring American interventions in the Middle East.
To meddle in a U.S. presidential election is a much better idea—from the perspective of someone who deeply hates American freedoms, American laws, the American way of life—even for someone who wants to defeat and to destroy Western Enlightenment civilization, in a war of civilizations.
It is unnecessary to construct a full-blown Manchurian candidate. All that’s needed is to boost the candidacy of a wealthy upstart crank, whose smooth-talking con man ways bedazzle some large crowds of idiots—to give him an edge; to put him over the top in Electoral College votes in a tight race. This is hybrid warfare, masterfully finessed.
The best part of this strategy: The candidate is too ridiculous to be perceived as a serious threat by normal people. Seriously!? In America, it so happens from time to time that such personalities attempt grandiose runs for a high office. So what? It’s not as if they’re going to win the U.S. presidency.
I hold no animus for Russian people. Moreover, there was a time when I was skeptical of American political antagonism to Putin; after all, American domestic propaganda about alleged foreign threats is, in fabled terms, “the child who cried wolf”. But here I am, on the morning of September 11, 2026, remembering where I was on the morning of September 11, 2001—and thinking about Vladimir Putin.
What was the most successful terrorist attack on American soil in the history of the United States? Osama bin Laden was an amateur.
Turning the page…
On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, while I’m remembering where I was and what I was doing when I heard the news, I’m impatiently wishing that the September 15, 2026 release date of David Corn’s How Russia Won (2026, HarperCollins) was moved up by a few days. I can’t wait to get my hands on this book. Its publication schedule barely missed the mark. And in the future, this is how I’ll remember what I was doing on the morning of September 11, 2026.
That wasn’t the impetus for the above essay. I wrote the essay, and read it back to myself; it then reminded me of Corn’s book and its almost-appropriate release schedule.
Judges (of all people) need to be told that The Big I Am and his cast of characters aren’t interested in winning cases in court. They are interested in disrupting the legal system.
Every second a high-minded jurist wastes scolding the DOJ is a second lost for democracy. Show them the door immediately!