WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is strongly considering naming Fox News host Jeanine Pirro as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, a source familiar with his thinking told NBC News on Thursday.
Trump announced earlier in the day that he was withdrawing the nomination of conservative activist Ed Martin to stay on as the top federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., on a permanent basis.
ABC News first reported Trump’s consideration of Pirro to take over the job on an interim basis. Martin’s role as acting U.S. attorney is set to end May 20.
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Trump considers Pirro “highly qualified” for the job, the source told NBC News, and an announcement about Pirro could happen as soon as Thursday, though the source added that nothing is final until Trump makes a public announcement.
The White House and Fox News did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Pirro pushed conspiracy theories about voting in the aftermath of Trump’s 2020 election loss, and came up in litigation filed by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox News tried to redact what one of Pirro’s executive producers thought about one of her post-2020 election monologues, with the producer writing, “This is completely crazy.”
Fox News and Dominion reached a $787.5 million settlement in the defamation lawsuit in 2023.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said earlier this week that he could not support Martin as Trump’s nominee for the position, citing concerns over the “stop the steal” organizer’s associations with Jan. 6 rioters.
Pirro has not been as closely aligned with Capitol attack defendants as Martin, but fed some of the conspiracy theories that precipitated the 2021 riot.
Three days before the attack, Pirro on air compared disruption of Congress’ planned certification of the 2020 election results to soldiers who fought in the American Revolutionary War.
“These hungry, tired, cold, defeated soldiers knew that it was their moment to stand up and fight for freedom. To many, Jan. 6 is such a moment,” Pirro said. “As we are all being told to shut up and move on, Jan. 6 will tell us whether there are any in Congress willing to battle for the America that those soldiers fought for, the one that you and I believe in.”
Three days after the attack, Pirro condemned the day’s events, saying it was “deplorable, reprehensible, outright criminal,” and that members of the movement should stop looking for others to blame.
“Take the veil of politics off. Be totally objective. Anyone watching this must condemn it,” Pirro said.
