Trump Names Jeanine Pirro, Fox News Host, as Interim U.S. Attorney for D.C.
President Trump said on Thursday that he would name the Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro, whose false statements about the 2020 election were part of a lawsuit against the network, the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, hours after he was forced to pull his first choice.
Selecting Ms. Pirro, the former Republican district attorney of Westchester County, N.Y., resolves a thorny dilemma for the president, who said hours earlier that he would withdraw his nomination to permanently install the interim U.S. attorney, Ed Martin, under pressure from Senate Republicans.
“During her time in office, Jeanine was a powerful crusader for victims of crime,” the president wrote on social media in announcing the pick, listing her background in law enforcement. He added, “She is in a class by herself.”
Ms. Pirro, 73, has known the president for decades, has earned his trust and would provide him with a reliable line into one of the country’s most important federal prosecutors offices in the Justice Department.
Ms. Pirro has not held a law enforcement job in two decades since stepping down as district attorney to pursue bids for higher office, including an ill-fated run against Hillary Clinton for Senate before the 2006 election.
Ms. Pirro has several attributes that have endeared her to Mr. Trump: She is on his television every day, defending him with husky-voiced vehemence as a member of “The Five” talk show on Fox; she incurred personal risk to trumpet his election lies; and she is apparently willing to ditch a lucrative TV career, on short notice, to bail him out of an embarrassing jam.
Mr. Trump needed to act fast. Mr. Martin’s 120-day term as interim U.S. attorney expires on May 20, and the job would have been filled by the judges who sit on the Federal District Court in Washington had the president not named a successor.
They are led by one of Mr. Trump’s judicial adversaries: James E. Boasberg, the court’s chief judge, who has ruled against the administration in several high-profile cases.
Ms. Pirro has far greater name recognition than Mr. Martin, a relatively obscure right-wing activist from Missouri, thanks to stints as her reality TV counterpart “Judge Jeanine” on the CW Network and Fox.
But she shares a similar penchant for partisan combat.
Like Mr. Martin, she supports Mr. Trump’s efforts to exact vengeance on his political enemies, has backed his challenges to federal judges who have questioned the legality of his immigration policies and spent months protesting the legitimacy of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s election to the presidency in 2020.
Ms. Pirro was among the Fox hosts named in a lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems for questioning the validity of ballot tabulations on Fox’s broadcasts. Fox settled the case and was forced to acknowledge that statements by Ms. Pirro and others were false.
She has staunchly defended Mr. Trump, offering him her support when he needed it most, particularly in the days leading up to the 2016 election when an outtake from “Access Hollywood” threatened to overwhelm his campaign.
He has also proved to be a reliable ally to her family. In 2021, during the final hours of his first term, Mr. Trump pardoned Ms. Pirro’s former husband — and Mr. Trump’s onetime lawyer — Albert J. Pirro Jr., who was convicted of conspiracy and tax evasion charges in 2000.
Fox News said Ms. Pirro would step down from the network immediately, calling her “a longtime beloved host across Fox News Media who contributed greatly to our success throughout her 14-year tenure.”
Ms. Pirro, a native of Elmira, N.Y., attended Albany Law School and earned a reputation as an aggressive, self-promotional prosecutor who focused on domestic violence cases.
Her name has appeared on short lists for a variety of appointments in the Trump administration over the years, including attorney general and the Supreme Court.
ABC News earlier reported that Ms. Pirro was under consideration to be the U.S. attorney in Washington.
Mr. Trump said on Thursday that he would move Mr. Martin into new roles in the Justice Department, making him associate deputy attorney general and pardon attorney. The administration had fired the previous pardon attorney amid a dispute about whether to restore the gun rights of the actor Mel Gibson, who has a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction.
Mr. Martin will also become the director of the “Weaponization Working Group,” an effort that is purportedly intended to root out “abuses of the criminal justice process” by local and federal law enforcement officers but that appears to provide the president a lever to exact retribution against his perceived enemies.
Michael M. Grynbaum contributed reporting.
