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Trump’s Reflecting Pool Fiasco Is Going to Haunt Him

The Iran war remains in a stalemate with the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed and some are now comparing the Felon to Jimmy Cater being held hostage by Iran and others saying the Felon has been defeated by Iran.  Meanwhile, the Felon's poll numbers remain in the toilet, the US economy continues to limp along with a 23,000 drop in jobs, and the Felon's efforts to prosecute "vandals" who in the Felon's fantasies damaged the Reflecting Pool are collapsing. All the evidence points to incompetent work by a company owned by a crony of the Felon who received a no bid contract to repair the Reflecting Pool - the Felon now, of course, is pretending to not know the contractor - and cases against those wrongly prosecuted by the utterly corrupt Department of Justice ("DOJ") are bein dismissed. At least one wrongly targeted defendant, former Olympic canoeist David Hearn,  is suing to have the charges against him permanently dismissed and may seek monetary damages for wrongful prosecution and perhaps defamation.   A piece at the New Republic looks at how the Felon's wrongful prosecutions will likely continue to come back to haunt him despite is continued lies that the Reflecting Pool was vandalized:

You’d be forgiven for thinking the saga involving Donald Trump’s vile prosecutions of innocent people over his Reflecting Pool fiasco has finally come to an ignominious end. On Thursday, a judge officially threw out felony charges against former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, who’d been falsely accused by Trump of vandalizing his disastrous renovation of the landmark.

But this is not the final chapter in this story—not by a long shot. And what happens next will help settle whether we are capable of dispensing real justice to all those Trump accomplices who are helping make our slide into authoritarianism possible.

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are set to launch an investigation into the decision to criminally charge Hearn and others over the Reflecting Pool fiasco, I’m told. Although Democrats are in the minority, their probe offers a blueprint for what they’ll pursue with subpoena power if they control the House in six months.

This week, Representative Jamie Raskin—the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee and potentially its future chair—will formally demand that the Justice and Interior Departments turn over a wealth of documents related to the charging decisions made in this case.

“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 said in a statement to me. “Participants in this frame-up will be held to account.”

At the center of this saga is Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for Washington, DC, a longtime Trump confidante. Pirro’s office eagerly indicted an innocent man after the ailing despot in the Oval Office, embarrassed over reports of algae and other problems plaguing his Reflecting Pool renovation, raged that his underlings must produce a scapegoat to spare him humiliation. Pirro did subsequently move to dismiss the case. But there’s a ton we still don’t know about all these corrupt machinations.

The more we learn, the worse it will likely get. Hearn, 67, had claimed he’d merely stopped to observe the already-widely-discussed failures at the Reflecting Pool and dipped his hand in the water. Yet despite the plausibility of this account, when Pirro charged him July with felony property destruction (several others received lesser charges), she declared she had “tremendous evidence” of his guilt.

But only weeks later, when Pirro moved to drop the case in late July, her office admitted that a wealth of information provided to prosecutors by the Department of the Interior—which oversees management of the Reflecting Pool—showed that the damage had been caused by a “botched installation and not vandalism.”

What remains to be answered fully is this: How did Pirro’s office secure the July 2 indictment of Hearn for a felony, and what happened inside the Trump administration leading up to it?

Pirro’s office has defended itself by insisting that at the time of this indictment, the Interior Department misled prosecutors by initially failing to provide them info indicating that bad contracting caused the damage.

Making the Keystone Kops nature of this even more buffoonish, Pirro has now angrily accused Interior Secretary Doug Burgum of deliberately misleading her office by persuading prosecutors of Hearn’s guilt. 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?

Indeed, none of Pirro’s excuses explain why her office brought the indictment when it did. . . . the government’s own sole witness testified to the grand jury that this damage was visible before Hearn ever touched it, and it was obvious to the naked eye that something far more than vandalism had marred the project.

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

Eisen and Hearn’s other lawyers are not letting this drop. For some time now, they’ve been seeking access to full transcripts of the grand jury proceedings—including instructions that prosecutors gave jurors on charging guidelines—to determine whether prosecutors misled them to secure Hearn’s indictment.

Eisen confirmed to me that the push for those grand jury materials will now continue, despite Hearn’s exoneration. That’s because the court dismissed the case without prejudice—so prosecutors can theoretically revive the charges later. Getting those materials will hopefully persuade the court to rule that prosecutors cannot bring back this case, Eisen said, because they will “reflect on whether prosecutors were candid with the grand jury.”

Recall that well before the indictment, Trump was already publicly stating as fact that the project had been vandalized. This was surely understood by Pirro and Burgum as a command to make it true that vandalism caused the renovation’s failure.

The stakes here are very high. The Justice Department has become the site of an epic struggle over Trump’s lawless efforts to unleash law enforcement on his critics. Hearteningly, many of these gambits have imploded on contact with facts and law. Many prosecutors have resisted, leading to resignations and firings.

Yet the authoritarian abuses continue, relying on underlings who are willing to carry them out—some eagerly, and others no doubt because going along is easier than resisting, as there’s no perceived accountability in the offing. That’s why it’s critical to seek all manner of censure and redress. In the Hearn affair, this will likely include civil lawsuits against the government, asking the courts to impose professional sanctions on key actors, and seeking their disbarment—possibly up to Pirro herself.

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Iran Issues List of Demanded American Concessions

The Felon has continually claimed that Iran is "desperate" for a peace deal and that the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz was imminent.   Like everything else flowing from the Felon's mouth these statements were lies aimed at calming the oil markets - the price of oil is rising again - or merely expressions of the Felon's delusion that he is in control of the situation.  With the release of a list of demanded American concessions, including war reparations payments, Iran has underscored the falsity of the Felon's claims.  Indeed, Iran appears like a cat playing with a mouse before going in for the kill - which in this context means keeping oil prices high and gleefully watching as the Felon's poll numbers tank and GOP concerns about the mid-term elections intensifies. All of this makes it clear that the war against Iran by the Felon and his unqualified Secretary of Defense was a fool's errand and unforced error that was doomed to go off the rails with America losing control of the situation.  By this statement, no slight is made towards American service members doing their best to follow the ill-advised directions of the Felon and Hegseth. Meanwhile, the Felon continues to threaten allies - a Texas company is seemingly preparing to drill for oil in Greenland without local or Danish approval. A piece in the New York Times looks at Iran's latest demands:

A top Iranian national security official delivered a sweeping set of demands on Saturday that he said the United States must meet before the Strait of Hormuz can reopen to maritime traffic, throwing the fate of the critical trade waterway into question.

Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, issued a statement carried by state media laying out multiple requirements for reopening the strait. He called for the United States to lift its naval blockade and sanctions on Iran, withdraw the U.S. military from around Iran, pay war reparations and release frozen Iranian assets, as well as end attacks on Iran’s allies in the region and threats against the country.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Iran’s demands. A previous cease-fire between Iran and the United States, agreed to in June, had said that sanctions would be fully lifted only in the event of a final deal regarding Iran’s nuclear program. And U.S. officials have said in the past that Iran could access its frozen funds only if it committed to giving up its highly enriched uranium first.

Mr. Zolghadr’s list of demands upended expectations that a deal with Oman would soon allow commerce to flow through the strait once more and ease global energy prices. They will likely put pressure on President Trump to consider Iran’s conditions if he wants to lower consumer prices for Americans, which pose a risk for Republicans ahead of November’s midterm elections.

Even before Mr. Zolghadr’s statement, Iranian officials had hinted on Saturday that the reopening of the strait was not imminent. Hossein Mohebbi, a spokesman for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, said that reopening the strait was “not contingent on the Iran-Oman negotiations.”

In comments carried by Tasnim, an Iranian news outlet affiliated with the Guards, Mr. Mohebbi said that it would depend “on the United States fully accepting Iran’s conditions.” . . . “However, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz is contingent on other conditions, including the United States compensating for its violations of the Islamabad Memorandum,” Mr. Araghchi was quoted as saying, referring to the cease-fire agreement that Iran and the United States signed in June.

The United States backed a southern route for ships that skirted Oman’s coastline and avoided Iranian waters, and Iran responded by warning and striking ships that took that route. The cease-fire soon collapsed, and the United States reimposed its naval blockade of Iranian ports.

“The Americans were seeking to establish new routes through the Strait of Hormuz, and despite the warnings issued by our country, they sought to undermine Iran’s management of the strait,” Mr. Araghchi said. “Therefore, any violation of the memorandum of understanding or of Iran’s management of the Strait of Hormuz is absolutely unacceptable to the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Raz Zimmt, an Iran expert at the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli research institute, said the comments by Mr. Mohebbi and Mr. Araghchi reflected Iran’s view that its negotiations with Oman were intended “at most” to work out how the waterway will be reopened in the future.

Even if Iran and Oman agree to specifics on the strait, “it is clear that Tehran will not agree to implement them without a return to the U.S. commitments under the memorandum, including lifting the naval blockade and resuming the process of sanctions relief,” Mr. Zimmt wrote on social media.

On Saturday, the Emirati foreign ministry said an Iranian attack had targeted a tanker belonging to the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company as it crossed the Strait of Hormuz.

Just over a dozen ships per day have navigated the strait over the past week, according to Kpler, a maritime data company. Before the war, an average of 130 ships used the route daily.

To avoid detection by the Iranian or American forces imposing blockades on the strait, some ships switched off the transponders that transmit their locations, making an accurate count of crossings difficult to compile.

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Trump Squandered America's Strategic Advantage

Another week has gone by and the Felon still has not found a means to exit the war with Iran that he started by choice and against the advice of experienced intelligence and military personnel who predicted that Iran would use the Strait of Hormuz as a weapon against both America's and the world's economy.  Despite the Felon's claims to have "won" the war and that Iran is "desperate for a deal", no settlement has been achieved and the negotiations between Iran and Oman to date would leave Iran controlling which ships would be granted entry to Persian Gulf - a situation the opposite of free access that existed before the Felon's war of choice. Worse yet, as additional strikes are launched by Iran and the USA, the war has left America weakened with depleted munitions reserves - especially in terms on Patriot and THAAD missiles - and I ran having demonstrated that (much like Ukraine is showing with Russia) a weaker power can hold a far stronger power at bay.   Meanwhile, Iran has threatened Saudi Arabia that tying itself to America will not protect it from attack even as Pete Hegseth - who is clearly far out of his league at the Pentagon - fires yet another top general.  Iran seemingly recognizes that the Felon has created an impossible mess for himself and is content to let the Felon sink in the quicksand of his own creation, knowing that the war is steadily undermining support for both the Felon and GOP on the home front. A piece at The Atlantic looks at the ongoing disaster:

The United States is running out of missiles. After five months of war with Iran, stockpiles of long-range weapons are so low, current and former U.S. defense officials told us, that they don’t believe the U.S. has enough to combat a threat in Asia. The remaining supplies, depending on the munition, are as low as 20 percent of what the Pentagon would like to have in hand. And stores of sophisticated interceptor missiles, such as Patriots and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missiles, are too depleted to give or sell the weapons to Ukraine or effectively defend against Iran’s launch of ballistic missiles.

The Pentagon this year has awarded tens of billions of dollars in contracts to replenish those arsenals. But signing contracts is not the same as delivering missiles. Those contracts will produce munitions over the coming years, not the coming months. The Trump administration has invested in the defense industrial base to accelerate production, as did the Biden administration, but for crucial systems such as the Patriot, supply is not projected to meet demand until about 2030. Meanwhile, Iran has ramped up production of its offensive drones and ballistic missiles, and enhanced their capabilities. The war is now being shaped as much by industrial supply and logistics as by economic considerations and the politics of the midterms.

[The Felon] President Trump raged at the assessment his national-security team gave him at Camp David on Friday, which showed that the U.S. military was running low on the munitions that would be necessary for Trump to order an escalation against Iran, a senior administration official familiar with the meeting told us. If the U.S. were to strike, Tehran would likely launch a barrage of missiles and drones against its neighbors in the region and the American bases they host. . . . [the Felon] Trump has grown frustrated at his inability to escape the stalemate of the war; he’s seething at its toll on the economy and is desperate to move on.

White House aides are concerned that Trump is losing his leverage in the conflict. He has threatened Iran many times but has rarely followed through; Tehran knows that. Tehran also knows that the U.S. is running low on munitions despite what Hegseth and the president say in public. Military leverage depends not simply on the U.S. ability to strike but also on its capacity to defend against Iran’s retaliation.

The White House has maintained that Iran would soon face an economic situation so dire that the regime would be forced to negotiate, and U.S. intelligence reports suggest that Iran is struggling. But the [Felon's] Trump administration has been surprised at Tehran’s resilience, and is no longer certain that the regime will reach the point where negotiation is its only option.

In the five months since the war started, the president has never faced such a weak position. The shortage of interceptors makes escalation dangerous. Nor would expanded strikes guarantee that Tehran will come back to the table.

That may leave diplomacy and concessions as the administration’s least risky option. . . . Trump is now considering a deal that gives Iran some control over maritime traffic. The proposed agreement between Oman and Iran, pending U.S. and Gulf approval, would reopen the strait by establishing a jointly managed framework for commercial shipping. Such a deal would give Iran the oversight of the crucial waterway it feels it has earned from the war, while also honoring Oman’s insistence on preserving freedom of navigation.

America’s stockpiles have been under strain for years, but became painfully clear after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. The U.S. military fired hundreds of missiles, some costing millions each, during the Trump administration’s 53-day campaign last year against the Houthis in Yemen. That was followed by nearly two weeks of U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran and the interception of Iranian missiles and drones aimed at Israel. During the first 38 days of the Iran war, the U.S. launched thousands of munitions.

Between American voters’ frustrations with rising gas prices and Hegseth’s mixed messages and past combative relationship with Congress, “there is no goodwill for the department here,” one congressional aide told us. . . . . Still, Congress is ultimately expected to provide much of the funds the Pentagon says it needs to replenish its stores. But what the U.S. really needs is time. Depending on the weapon, replenishment to prewar levels could take as long as five years, Mark Cancian, who tracks munitions stockpiles for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., told us.

Another three years would get stockpiles “to a level where the joint staff and U.S. commanders in charge of the Asia Pacific would be comfortable,” Cancian said. In theory, that gives Beijing plenty of time to take advantage of American shortages with, say, an invasion of Taiwan.

The U.S. raced to develop cheaper ways to tackle the Iranian-supplied drones that Russia deployed, and has made some progress. But the stores of interceptors such as Patriots and THAADs were rapidly expended. “There are no good alternatives for stopping ballistic missiles,” Cancian told us. “Without these defensive missiles, attacking missiles will land unopposed. That is what is happening in Ukraine.”

Had the Iran war been over in a matter of several weeks, as the administration initially predicted, the U.S. munitions problem would not be so dire. And the problem would be mitigated “if we knew when the war will end,” one defense official told us. “The real problem is that there is no long-term strategy—and we can’t plan around that.”

Before the shortages, the U.S. used its technological advantages to shape its strategy. Now the technological advances of its foes—and the strain they have put on U.S. stockpiles—are forcing Washington to reconsider its strategy again, this time without the long-held assumption that U.S. forces would enjoy an advantage in munitions.

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