Pirro: Trump turns to another loyalist

Pirro is a "strident defender" of Trump's "political vendettas and authoritarian power grabs."

(Image credit: John Lamparski / Getty Images)

The rule of law had a brief victory last week, when the U.S. Senate blocked Ed Martin, President Trump's insurrectionist-sympathizing choice to serve as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said Mark Joseph Stern in Slate. But hold the celebrations: Trump quickly announced Martin's interim replacement, the president's longtime pal and Fox News host Jeanine Pirro. Pirro is a "fully radicalized" 2020 election denier, who was named in Dominion Voting Systems' defamation lawsuit against Fox for saying in a November 2020 broadcast that there "are serious allegations" that the company's voting machines were rigged. One of her own producers called her election-fraud ravings "completely crazy." Fox also rebuked and suspended Pirro in 2019 after she asked whether Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) followed "sharia law" because she wears a hijab. For now at least, Trump has appointed Pirro for a 120-day term, like Martin, and may or may not nominate her for the permanent position.

Trump said Pirro is in a "class by herself," said Rich Schapiro in NBCNews.com, and "he's right in one sense." Pirro once hoped to run for New York attorney general and then governor, but her political ambitions were derailed after she was "recorded plotting to bug her then-husband's boat to catch him in an affair," triggering a federal probe that ended without charges. No other U.S. attorney nominee is known to have a federal investigation on their résumé. Pirro is a "partisan hack," but "a qualified one," said Gilad Edelman in The Atlantic. Before becoming a pundit whose "unwavering Trump support" stands out even among other right-wing TV personalities, Pirro had a substantial legal career. She served as a county judge and, from 1994 to 2005, as the elected district attorney for Westchester County in New York. Unlike Martin, who was a defense lawyer, Pirro has "tried cases, made charging decisions, and managed an office full of prosecutors."

Sure, Pirro did those jobs "ably," said the New York Daily News in an editorial, but it's obvious Trump didn't pick her for her "prosecutorial or managerial chops." He did so because she became a "strident defender" of his "political vendettas and authoritarian power grabs." Like Martin, she's "a pure political operator" who'll use the awesome power of the U.S. Attorney's office to go after Trump's enemies and protect his allies, rather than "working on behalf of the public."