Trump names Fox News host Jeanine Pirro as top DC prosecutor

Brian Niemietz, New York Daily News on May 8, 2025

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President Donald Trump said Thursday he’s appointing Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro as the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

The president’s naming of a replacement for outgoing interim prosecutor Ed Martin was expected to come sometime Thursday, sources earlier told ABC News, who first reported Pirro was under consideration.

Trump made the news official hours later on Truth Social.

“Jeanine was Assistant District Attorney for Westchester County, New York, and then went on to serve as County Judge, and District Attorney, where she was the first woman ever to be elected to those positions,” he wrote. “Jeanine previously hosted her own Fox News Show, ‘Justice with Judge Jeanine,’ for ten years, and is currently Co-Host of ‘The Five,’ one of the Highest Rated Shows on Television. ... She is in a class by herself.”

Martin’s nomination was pulled earlier in the day after Trump confessed that his first choice for the job — who had no prosecutorial experience and advocated for Jan. 6 attackers — didn’t have enough support in the Senate to get the position permanently.

“We have somebody else that will be great,” Trump teased before announcing Pirro as the latest in a string of appointments coming from Fox News, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who co-hosted “Fox & Friends Weekend.”

Pirro, 73, has been fiercely loyal to Trump dating back to his first term in office. When he lost reelection in 2020, she was one of the Fox News hosts who promoted lies about voting machines being rigged against the Republican incumbent. Fox News settled a $787.5 million lawsuit with one of the voting technologies company it was accused of defaming and is still being sued by another.

Trump has also been supportive of Pirro. Before leaving office in 2021, he signed a last-minute pardon for her ex-husband, who had been convicted on conspiracy and tax evasion charges equaling more than $1 million.

Trump didn’t indicate whether he would nominate Pirro to lead the nation’s largest U.S. attorney’s office on a more permanent basis, though her ability to prosecute without bias is sure to be called into question. Pirro was suspended by Fox News in 2019 for making anti-Islamic comments on air, according to CNN. Fox News said at the time it would not discuss its internal dealings.

Trump was quick to come to Pirro’s defense after that incident, claiming mainstream news outlets were conspiring in “all-out campaigns against @FoxNews hosts who are doing too well.”

Fox News also had to come to Pirro’s defense when she appeared intoxicated during a 2020 broadcast, which the network blamed on technical difficulties due to her having to broadcast from home for the first time during COVID-19 lockdowns.

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