On the eve of President Trump's inauguration, Fox News star Jeanine Pirro stood on the stage at a party in his honor, his son Donald Trump Jr. by her side.
A Trump official responsible for hiring raised Pirro's arm aloft and told the crowd, "Very soon, we have a big announcement for another big hire!"
Pirro mouthed the words "No, no," and soon issued a statement through Fox that she "will not be joining the administration," though she helped to rally Trump's fans at the event.
On Thursday night, Trump said he was appointing Pirro to be the acting U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. She's replacing Ed Martin, whose Senate confirmation ran into trouble with both Republicans and Democrats.
In his announcement, Trump proudly cited Pirro's work for Fox. The Five, which she co-hosted, is "one of the Highest Rated Shows on Television," he noted.
Pirro is, by the count of the liberal watchdog group Media Matters, the 23rd Fox personality named to a high-ranking position in the Trump administration. She did not respond to NPR's request for comment.
The Fox-to-Trump Funnel
The Fox News funnel keeps on pouring into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Even the network's stars — many of whom have advised the president off the air —have acknowledged the phenomenon is an unprecedented circumstance. In Trump's second administration — not even four months old — there are more people with "Fox" on their résumés than there were during all four years of his first term.
A former Fox News personality serves as the director of national intelligence. What about the administrator of the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid? Yup. The deputy director of the FBI? Check. And don't forget the former Trump national security adviser who was just shunted over to represent the U.S. at the United Nations. The ambassador to Israel is a former Fox News host. So is the nominee to be the ambassador to Greece (who is also Don Jr.'s former fiancée).
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi was not a Fox News pundit. But she did guest host The Five several times while serving as Florida's attorney general.
Two of the most prominent of these Fox-Trump administration officials are among its most telegenic: Defense Secretary and former Fox & Friends Weekend host Pete Hegseth and Transportation Secretary and former Fox Business host Sean Duffy. Both men worked with their wives at Fox. Duffy's wife Rachel Campos-Duffy is a host on Hegseth's former Fox News show; the influence former Fox producer Jennifer Hegseth has wielded during the defense secretary's brief tenure has drawn unwanted press scrutiny.
It is not clear the two former talking heads talk to each other, however: After the fatal plane crash involving a military helicopter near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Duffy complained that the Defense Department was not sharing vital information. He lodged his complaint on — where else — Fox News.
"The DOD has promised radical transparency," Duffy told his former colleague Laura Ingraham. "They should tell us who is qualified to take a helicopter out of the Pentagon. I don't know, but they have to tell us."
Ingraham offered to call Hegseth right there, lifting up her smartphone.
"You call Pete. Dial in!" Duffy responded, adding that he needed the information for safety purposes. Press aides to the two cabinet secretaries did not return NPR's requests for comment.
Pirro left lawyering for the studio decades ago
Pirro was a county judge and district attorney in Westchester County, the suburb immediately north of New York City, but she's been out of office for nearly two decades. She has a longstanding friendship with Trump, who rose to prominence as a real estate developer in New York City. Trump contributed to Pirro's unsuccessful 2006 effort to seek the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate against then-incumbent, Democrat Hillary Clinton. (Trump was also a donor to Clinton.)
After a nationally syndicated reality courtroom show on the CW network, Pirro was named by then-Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes to be a host of her own weekend program on Fox in 2011.
She presented herself as tough on crime but became a tough talker more broadly.
During Trump's first term, Pirro called for the jailing of FBI and Justice Department staffers, spoke on stage at a Trump campaign event, and ran rhetorical interference for him during his impeachment trials.
In 2019, as Media Matters reported, Pirro acknowledged being suspended by Fox, which had rebuked her for suggesting that Rep. Ilhan Omar's hijab, reflecting her observance of Muslim practices, suggested an "adherence to sharia law."
"This woman should never be on live television"
Back in early November 2020, just after Joe Biden defeated Trump to win the White House, Pirro was among a slew of Fox News stars who amplified the conspiracy theories — and later, outright lies — about the election being rigged.
A senior executive at the network yanked her weekend show from the air the Saturday after the election, saying he couldn't trust she would be responsible.
Two weeks later, Pirro's executive producer flagged that the introduction she proposed for her next show was "rife with conspiracy theories and BS and yet another example why this woman should never be on live television."
Pirro was one of four Fox hosts sued for defamation along with the network, by the election machine Dominion Voting Systems. Fox paid $787.5 million to settle the case on the eve of the jury trial, which would have focused on statements on Fox's programs spuriously giving credibility to false claims of election fraud in 2020.
The network is in court again in a parallel suit filed by Smartmatic, a voting tech company.
Pirro used her perch to call attention to Jan. 6
As NPR has reported, after the election, Pirro was among the Fox News personalities who kept raising alarms about the importance of Jan. 6, 2021 — the date the U.S. Congress was to certify Biden's win.
On Jan. 3, Jeanine Pirro compared those gathering to protest at the foot of the U.S. Capitol to the American soldiers in the Revolutionary War, adding, "Jan. 6 will tell us whether there are any in Congress willing to battle for America."
After Trump addressed the crowd, hundreds of protesters laid siege to the Capitol to try to block the certification of the election.
The U.S. Attorney's office would go on to prosecute more than 1,500 people for crimes in connection with the riot. More than 1,000 pleaded guilty; another 200 were found guilty.
Upon taking office, Trump granted clemency to all the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and named Martin as acting U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C.
Martin had previously advanced bogus claims about election fraud in swing states in 2020. He spoke at a raucous protest the day before the siege of the Capitol. And he represented several of the defendants in court.
That record unraveled Martin's prospects for nomination. A key Republican senator, North Carolina's Thom Tillis, made clear he'd vote against Martin.
Trump has once more found a like-minded prosecutor to lead the office.
And he tuned into a favorite TV channel to find her.
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