Fox Producer Said Pirro Is 'Nuts,' So Trump Names Her Top D.C. Prosecutor
Fox News host Jeanine Pirro is so unhinged that the network took her show off the air following the 2020 election out of (subsequently confirmed) fear that she’d use it to launder deranged conspiracy theories about the results. But she’s a fanatical supporter of President Donald Trump, and that is apparently enough to get her tapped as the top federal prosecutor for Washington, D.C.
Trump announced Thursday night that he was appointing Pirro as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, specifically praising her Fox News career. Earlier in the day, Trump indicated that he planned to move on from acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, another right-wing media figure, who appeared unable to muster sufficient votes for Senate confirmation. Pirro is the 23rd person with Fox on their resume whom Trump has selected to join his second administration.
While Martin’s legal support for January 6 defendants reportedly played a major role in the failure of his nomination, Pirro has no recent legal experience to speak of. She was elected as a Westchester County Court judge in New York in 1990, and then she served as the county’s district attorney before suffering through an aborted run for U.S. Senate in 2005. Pirro joined Fox in 2006 and has been firmly ensconced on its sets for the last two decades, serving as a legal analyst, host of the weekend evening program Justice with Judge Jeanine, and then co-host of the weekday panel show The Five.
Following Trump’s rise to the presidency, Pirro stood out among the network’s stable of shills and propagandists for providing what my late colleague Simon Maloy deemed “advocacy for the president [that] is so aggressive that it often borders on insane.”
Her lowlights during his first term included calling for a “cleansing” of the FBI and the Justice Department, which she said were full “of individuals who should not just be fired, but who need to be taken out in handcuffs”; describing Trump as “a nonstop, never-give-up, no-holds-barred human version of the speed of light” and comparing his negotiation prowess to the skill of NFL running back Saquon Barkley; repeatedly urging then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign if he was unwilling to protect Trump and prosecute his enemies; speaking on stage at a Trump campaign event in apparent violation of network policy; and getting suspended by Fox for pointing out that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) wears a hijab and asking, “Is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to sharia law which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution?”
Pirro’s zealous support for Trump loomed over her coverage of his lies that the 2020 election had been stolen from him through election fraud. Fox preempted her first broadcast of Justice following Election Day. But when she returned to the airwaves for subsequent broadcasts, she provided conspiracy-minded segments that promoted false claims about the election results, including attacks on technology company Dominion Voting Systems. Those segments played a key role in Dominion’s defamation lawsuit against Fox, which the network ultimately settled for a massive sum.
That lawsuit also provided a keyhole view of how Pirro’s own colleagues viewed her. In an email, Fox executive David Clark, who oversaw her show, privately explained why he had taken her off the air at first: “I don’t trust her to be responsible. … Her guests are all going to say the election is being stolen and if she pushes back at all it will just be a token.” Internal Fox communications also show her executive producer describing her as a “reckless maniac” who is “nuts,” promotes “conspiracy theories,” and “should never be on live television.”
But it’s hard to get fired from Fox for being too supportive of Trump — and indeed, Pirro subsequently received a promotion to The Five. She used that post to furiously denounce the legal cases against Trump and the prosecutors and even jurors involved in them.
“We have gone over a cliff in America,” she said after a New York jury found Trump guilty on 34 counts. “This is a new era in America, and I think it goes against the ilk of who we are as Americans and our faith in the criminal justice system.”
Since Trump returned to office, Pirro has kept busy by showering him with praise. “Donald Trump is not panicked and neither should we be because he's bringing us to the golden age, Harold, and that's the end of it,” she said last month.
She’s also lashed out at anyone attempting to stand in his way, from federal employees who “think they’re entitled to a job” to “stupid” judges who rule against him to governors who won’t let state law enforcement cooperate with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
Pirro spent years denouncing the Justice Department for not serving as an extension of Trump’s will and throwing his political foes in jail. Now she’ll have the opportunity to do just that.
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.
