1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

The Reflecting Pool has been out of the news cycle for a while, so here’s a reminder. In April, Trump handed a no-bid contract to a company that had worked on his properties. Nearly 15 million dollars to repaint the Reflecting Pool “American flag blue” in time for July 4th. Within days, the water bloomed with algae and the coating started peeling. The president couldn’t admit fault, so he found someone else to blame. Vandals did it, he said. “Sick people.” David Hearn, a former Olympian, was later indicted by a grand jury. He had stopped at the pool and touched a piece of coating that was already loose. He was hit with a felony. Three others were charged with misdemeanors. Then the evidence caught up. The government’s own filings blamed a “botched installation” by the contractor. Not vandalism. Every case was dropped. But Hearn wanted answers. His lawyers, including a former Justice Department inspector general, asked the current inspector general to investigate the bogus charges. They allege witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and false testimony. The inspector general, a Trump appointee, didn’t. He passed on the investigation, referring it to the Office of Professional Responsibility instead. That office answers to the Attorney General. It doesn’t have to make its findings public. It doesn’t have to report to Congress. Hearn’s lawyers are realistic about the referral. Sending it there, they wrote, consigns these allegations “to oblivion.” So the Reflecting Pool saga is over, at least until Democrats take Congress, but it captures how Trump uses the Justice Department. First, he turned it on an innocent man to cover for his own failures. Then, when Hearn sought an independent investigation into how he was prosecuted, the watchdog declined to investigate and referred the matter to an internal office with less public accountability. The inspector general had a chance to show the DOJ still answers to someone, anyone, but President Trump. He still passed. Trump fired roughly 17 inspectors general in his first week back in office. The ones replaced by him seem to have gotten the message. Trump might try to say that the Reflecting Pool has been a success, which he did as recently as this morning. But what we’ve all seen from this debacle is an administration that has failed from top to bottom, both on renovations and in delivering real justice.