WATCH: Jim Jordan Sputters When Asked if Alleged Reflecting Pool Vandal Should Get Cash from ‘Anti-Weaponization’ Fund — After Trump DOJ Dropped Case

 

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) went off the rails Sunday when CNN’s Dana Bash asked if a former Olympian charged with desecrating the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool should be compensated for government “weaponization.”

During a discussion of Trump’s insistence that a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” be set up, Bash said, “Just kind of looking ahead to who could or should be eligible for the fund, I want to play something that the Interior secretary Doug Burgum told me about the reflecting pool,” Bash said before playing video of Burgum.

BURGUM: It didn’t peel off. There was vandalism. There was box box cutters. There have been seven arrests. There were people literally trying to destroy part of the monument.

BASH: You’re 100% sure that what happened with the liner was vandalism? You can prove it?

BURGUM: Oh, absolutely we can. And as we we drain it, and we’ve got all the photographs.

Bash continued addressing Jordan, saying, “As you well know, the U.S. Attorney here in D.C., Jeanine Pirro, said that vandalism did not damage the pool, but it was a hasty and botched contract renovation that did. They dropped their case, a criminal case, that they had against former Olympian David Hearn. Given what he’s gone through, should he be eligible for money from the anti-weaponization fund?”

“Well, that would be up to the board. I mean, if what —” Jordan began before Bash interjected, “But, what do you think?

“That’s up to, I don’t make the decision. It’s up to —”

“I know, but you have an opinion,” Bash shot back.

“What I do know is Peter Strzok shouldn’t have got $1.2 million when he tried to undermine President Trump’s election campaign —”

“So, you have an opinion on that,” Bash said. “You have an opinion that he shouldn’t have gotten it. What about David Hearn?”

“Well, that’ll be up to the board!” Jordan repeated, growing agitated. “I don’t know all the facts, this story just broke, I don’t know all the facts — why the Justice Department dropped the case, why the Department of Interior said that there was something there. I’d have to look at all that. We’d have to look!”

“Mr. Chairman, one of the facts now, and this is based on what the president’s own U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, who I know you know well, she used to be on Fox, said the ramifications of it was that they were trying to send a man who was innocent to jail, based on lies about vandalism. He was accused of crimes that he did not commit. As chair of the Judiciary Committee, does that bother you?” Bash asked.

“If those are the facts, of course, but I don’t know that those are the facts, we have not seen all that evidence. What I do know is what I talked about, Mark Houck. What I do know, what happened in the Garland-Biden Justice Department —

Bash let Jordan ramble on before stating, “Once you learn all the facts, I am interested,” Bash said.

Watch above, via CNN.

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