Trump doesn’t fire Pirro at White House meeting hours after saying she ‘choked’ over Reflecting Pool case

CNN

By Alayna Treene, Kaitlan Collins, Kristen Holmes, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump, who has said US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro “choked” over the Reflecting Pool vandalism case, did not fire his longtime ally during an afternoon White House meeting, nor did she offer her resignation, multiple sources told CNN.

Trump had been considering removing her after the Justice Department concluded that the problems with the pool stemmed from a flawed renovation rather than vandalism, two people familiar with his thinking told CNN earlier Monday. The president spent the weekend fuming about that decision, one of the sources said, noting he has been “furious” with Pirro — frustration he later voiced publicly in the Oval Office.

“I was disappointed in Jeanine Pirro. Really disappointed in Jeanine Pirro,” he told reporters at unrelated event. “She folded like an umbrella.”

Later that afternoon, Trump met at the White House with both Pirro and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, a person familiar with the meeting told CNN. Others were also present at the meeting.

The Reflecting Pool case has put the two Trump appointees at odds in recent days. In a court filing last week, Pirro’s office directly blamed other federal agencies, including the Interior Department, for not being forthcoming with information about the bungled renovation. Burgum, meanwhile, has stood by Trump’s allegations of vandalism.

The Justice Department acknowledged in its Friday court filing that the president’s $14 million renovation of the Reflecting Pool was “hasty and botched” and said it was dropping the criminal case against former Olympian David Hearn, who was accused of vandalizing the landmark.

Part of Trump’s anger over the filing was that it “blindsided” him, a senior administration official said. “The president did not know beforehand that she was going to do that,” they said.

CNN reached out to Pirro’s office and the Justice Department for comment about Trump considering removing her. The White House directed CNN to the president’s prior comments on the filing and did not comment on the substance of that reporting.

However, Trump made his displeasure with Pirro, a former Fox News host, known on Monday.

“Frankly, I think she choked, because the judge was really vicious. Instead of going after the people that did it, the judge went after her and went after her department, and I guess she choked,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump and Pirro also spoke by phone on Saturday about the court filing. Their conversation “wasn’t pretty,” said one of the sources, who was read out on the call.

Pirro told Trump it was the career officials in her office that were responsible for the filing, another source said. A longtime prosecutor who oversees prosecutions in DC Superior Court signed the court filing asking to dismiss the case on Friday.

In addition to the Saturday call, Pirro has spoken with Trump multiple times about the situation.

Trump on Saturday publicly criticized the move, posting to Truth Social: “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool. I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM.”

Pirro argued in her filing that the Department of Interior “provided less than fulsome information at the outset of this case.”

“Had DOI been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment,” it read.

Despite those accusations, the president has not been angry with Burgum, the sources said, and he continues to believe that vandals are responsible for the damage to the Reflecting Pool. Burgum dismissed Pirro’s argument in a social media post on Saturday, saying, “The evidence is clear, vandals have repeatedly caused damage to the Reflecting Pool.”

However, internal communications CNN received through FOIA requests between the National Park Service — which oversaw the project under the Department of Interior — and DC Water from March through last month make no mention of any vandalism as the department was planning to drain the pool.

Trump had said the pool would need to be drained to make repairs caused by the alleged vandalism — yet an email from NPS acknowledged as early as July 1 that the pool would need to be drained due to algae. The agency also weighed whether to dye the pool water; in the past, the water has been dyed black to help reflect better.

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors have dropped cases against three more individuals previously charged with destruction of property at the Reflecting Pool, according to DC court filings. The three faced fines up to $1,000 and a maximum of 180 days behind bars.

Hearn, who previously pleaded not guilty to the felony charge in DC’s Superior Court, has legal options that could unearth more embarrassing details on how his case was handled. The judge hasn’t officially dismissed Hearn’s charges as of Monday afternoon, and his lawyers are expected to file a response to Pirro’s request to dismiss the case this week.

“Nothing is off the table,” said Michael R. Bromwich, an attorney representing Hearn.

Among his options: referring the prosecutors involved to a bar disciplinary authority; asking inspectors general to look at the conduct of the Justice Department and Interior Department; filing lawsuits; seeking more of the grand jury record documenting the prosecutors’ presentation of the indictment; and asking the judge to dismiss the case so it cannot be brought again. Pirro’s office has so far sought only to dismiss Hearn’s charge without prejudice, meaning prosecutors wouldn’t be barred from attempting to revive the case later.

This headline and story have been updated with additional reporting.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

CNN’s Katelyn Polantz, Sunlen Serfaty, Casey Tolan, Kevin Liptak and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn contributed to this report.