Donald Trump’s first choice to serve as the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., was Ed Martin, a hyperpartisan Republican lawyer whose nomination collapsed in the face of bipartisan opposition.
After Martin’s bid failed, the president assured the public that his second choice would be “great,” and soon after, Trump announced that he wanted Jeanine Pirro — perhaps best known for work as a Fox News host — to be the top federal prosecutor in the nation’s capital.
Evidently, that sounds “great” to Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. USA Today reported:
Former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro has moved one step closer to taking on a long-term role as the top federal prosecutor for Washington, D.C., after a Senate committee voted to advance her nomination. … The vote by the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee sets the stage for a vote by the full Senate on Pirro’s bid to be the D.C. U.S. attorney.
It’s worth emphasizing that the committee vote was technically unanimous, but only because the panel’s Democratic members boycotted the process. In fact, the Democratic minority intends to take their concerns to the Senate parliamentarian, though their odds of success aren’t great.
The Fox News vet has already been serving in the role on an interim basis since mid-May.
Democratic concerns about Pirro’s background are easy to understand, especially given her work on Fox News. It’s unrealistic to try to summarize her rhetorical record in a single blog post, but broadly speaking, as regular readers know, there are two key elements of Pirro’s career as a television personality to keep in mind.
The first is that she’s as much of a sycophantic Trump loyalist as anyone in conservative media. As The Washington Post noted after the president’s announcement, “Jeanine Pirro has long stood out as one of his most reliable backers, often taking his critics to task in stark and colorful language.”
The affection has been mutual. In 2019, Fox News found it necessary to publicly condemn anti-Muslim statements Pirro made, at which point Trump leapt to her defense.
This kind of partisan unity between the president and Pirro helps explain why she was nominated, but it’s hardly reassuring given the powers of the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C.
The other angle of note is that the Republican lawyer’s worldview appears to be rooted in a series of outlandish conspiracy theories. Way back in 2014, Pirro launched into a truly unhinged rant against Barack Obama, suggesting to viewers that the Democratic president was secretly training ISIS radicals, prompting BuzzFeed to publish a memorable headline: “Is This The Craziest Rant A Fox News Host Has Ever Done?”
In the years that followed, Pirro continued to peddle one ludicrous conspiracy theory after another. Indeed, after Trump’s 2020 election defeat, it reached the point that Fox News felt the need to temporarily remove Pirro from the air. According to court filings, one executive who oversaw her show at the time privately explained, “I don’t trust her to be responsible.” As Media Matters noted, internal Fox communications revealed by court filings also showed that her executive producer described Pirro as a “reckless maniac” who is “nuts,” promotes “conspiracy theories” and “should never be on live television.” In theory, these details might give senators pause before backing her nomination to serve as of the United States’ most important prosecutors. Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee rubber-stamped her anyway. Her nomination now heads to the floor for a final confirmation vote, and unless four GOP senators break ranks, Pirro will almost certainly succeed. If confirmed, my MSNBC colleague Barbara McQuade — a former U.S. attorney and University of Michigan Law School — recently made the case that Trump will use her “as a tool of retribution in our nation’s capital.” Given that Pirro has, among things, endorsed possible criminal investigations into Jan. 6 prosecutors, it’s an unsettling prospect. This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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