The plot to protect Trump’s wounded ego is unraveling: analysis

President Donald Trump's renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has been a humiliating disaster. As lawyer Norm Eisen alleged, Trump tried to save face by scapegoating his client, David Hearn, and claiming that vandals were responsible for the failed installation of the liner he decided the pool needed.

As Greg Sargent explained for The New Republic, things are about to get much worse.

Sargent spoke with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who is likely to become the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee if Democrats take over Congress after November. Raskin wants to know what happened and who lied.

“Judiciary Democrats will investigate who lied, who buried the evidence, and who decided to threaten an American citizen with prison simply to protect Trump’s wounded feelings and continuing corruption,” Raskin told Sargent. “Participants in this frame-up will be held to account.”

U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro, dismissed charges against Olympian David Hearn after the government's evidence made it clear that the damage being blamed on Hearn was there before Hearn was. At one point, Trump even tried to blame ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl for "trying to rip the rubber off." Trump decided that his pool couldn't have been a failure attributed to his project. He needed someone to blame.

Sargent said, "This was surely understood by Pirro and Burgum as a command to make it true that vandalism caused the renovation’s failure."

Pirro's big press conference announcing Hearn as the new target was based on the information the Department of the Interior gave her, not based on an actual investigation by law enforcement. So, her announcement that Hearn was being indicted and that there was "tremendous evidence” of his guilt didn't come from evidence. Pirro was ultimately forced to admit that the prosecutors from the Department of the Interior collected evidence showing that the lining failures came from a "botched" installation and not individuals. It was a humiliating blow for Trump.

So, there is a larger question about how Pirro was able to secure an indictment from the Grand Jury Hearn on July 2 when there was no evidence to prove his guilt and what the Trump administration did behind the scenes to secure the indictment. Pirro blames Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, saying that he intentionally misled her office about the evidence they had.

As Sargent explained, "But under ethics guidelines, prosecutors aren’t supposed to bring indictments unless they really think the charges are supported. Shouldn’t Pirro have looked more skeptically at this “evidence” before throwing the book at Hearn?"

“The notion that they did not know that there was a botched, rushed renovation of the Reflecting Pool does not hold water,” Eisen told Sargent.

Unlike other cases where Trump has targeted someone unfairly, the case is either dropped or thrown out, and the grateful victim tries to move on with their life. That's not happening this time. Eisen and Hearn want to know what the grand jury was told to get the indictment because it clearly wasn't true. Someone had to have lied to the grand jury, and there are penalties for that.

Eisen explained that instead of dropping the case and moving on, the case was dismissed without prejudice, meaning prosecutors could charge Hearn again later. So, they're still fighting for Hearn's innocence, and they want to know what the grand jury was told.

Former federal prosecutor Daniel R. Alonso told Sargent, "Courts are generally very reluctant to grant access to grand jury transcripts." In this case, however, Alonso said, Hearn has "more than a colorable argument."

Eisen may be able to catch the administration in a lie that tracks back to the president himself. It would be a humiliating blow.