Donald Trump said on Thursday he would name Jeanine Pirro, a Fox News host and former state-level prosecutor, to be the interim US attorney for the District of Columbia after a key Republican senator said he would not support the loyalist initially selected for the job.
Pirro, a former district attorney of Westchester county, New York, is a diehard Trump supporter whose false claim that the 2020 election was rigged by Dominion Voting Systems was used against Fox in court.
The move to select Pirro pulled Trump out of a fraught situation after he was forced to withdraw the nomination of Ed Martin, who has been serving as the interim US attorney since the start of Trump’s second term.
Interim US attorneys can serve for 120 days until they need to be confirmed permanently by the Senate. If they do not win confirmation, or if the president has not named a successor, the vacancy is filled by the judges who sit on the bench in federal district court in Washington.
The chief US district judge in Washington is James Boasberg, who Trump sees as a judicial adversary, after he blocked Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport suspected Venezuelan gang members and then opened a contempt inquiry after his injunction was flouted.
Trump had been left in a bind with Martin, who was seen to have hurt his chances for confirmation by being overly aggressive with threats to criminally prosecute Trump’s political adversaries, including the Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, people familiar with the matter said.
Even if that behavior endeared him to Trump’s wider base, Senate Republicans recoiled at Martin’s threat to prosecute Schumer, the people said, because senators have a history of protecting their own and because they worried about a Democratic appointee acting similarly in the future. Republican North Carolina senator Thom Tillis said he would not support Martin’s nomination.
Martin also lacked allies at the justice department, where senior officials privately grew exasperated at his social media pronouncements that they felt made his US attorney’s office appear dysfunctional, and were not there to advocate on his behalf as his confirmation loomed.
For instance, Martin had quickly made clear he intended to use the role to defend Trump, writing on social media that the office would act as “President Trumps’ [sic] lawyers” and saying he would not hire graduates of schools that practiced the diversity policies the president has vilified.
NPR also reported on ties between Martin and Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, a January 6 rioter whom federal prosecutors called a “Nazi sympathizer”. Martin had told the Senate “I am not close with him”, despite appearing with Hale-Cusanelli at events and praising him.
Trump announced Martin’s replacement in a on his social network Truth Social, praising Pirro as “in a class by herself”. She is the latest in a string of Fox News figures tapped by Trump for government posts, a list that includes the defense secretary Pete Hegseth.
Pirro agreed on Thursday to take over the position and start unwinding her lucrative Fox News career at short notice, two people familiar with the discussions said, saving Trump from the ignominy of Martin’s nomination sinking in the Senate and then having Boasberg choose a replacement.
She has not held a law enforcement job since she stepped down two decades ago as a Republican district attorney in Westchester County, New York, to pursue failed bids for higher office before becoming a major Fox News host with her own show and co-host duties on The Five.
But with Pirro agreeing to take the job, Trump now has a longtime friend and reliable line into one of the most important and powerful federal prosecutors offices at the justice department, which itself is being led in large part by his own personal defense lawyers.
Pirro has known Trump for decades, and their relationship put herself at personal risk by repeating Trump’s false 2020 election fraud. Dominion Voting Systems named her in its defamation suit against Fox, which settled and acknowledged her statements were false.
But Trump had also been an ally to Pirro and her family. In the final hours of his first term, Trump pardoned Albert Pirro, Pirro’s former husband and notably his one-time lawyer and lobbyist, who had been convicted on charges of fraud and tax evasion in 2000.
Pirro earned her law degree from Albany Law School before becoming a local prosecutor in New York who worked on domestic violence cases. She has been floated for various jobs in the Trump administration, including attorney general. ABC News earlier reported she was under consideration for the role.
Robert Mackey contributed reporting
