On August 2, Senate Republicans pushed forward with the confirmation of former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, despite her long history of election denialism and public attacks on January 6 prosecutors. The vote passed 50-45, with North Carolina’s Senator Thom Tillis voting in favor, just weeks after he also supported Trump’s deeply controversial judicial nominee Emil Bove.
Pirro, a longtime Trump ally and television personality, agreed on air earlier this year that prosecutors handling January 6 cases should themselves face criminal charges; she’s now managing them. Though Pirro previously served as a judge and prosecutor in New York, her decade-plus as a Fox News pundit was defined by fierce partisanship and frequent promotion of election conspiracy theories – even after her own network corrected them.
Her role in spreading false claims about Dominion Voting Systems was central to the company’s defamation lawsuit against Fox, which the network ultimately settled for $787 million. On-air in late 2020, Pirro falsely claimed Dominion’s software could flip votes, calling into question the legitimacy of the election results. She repeated the claim in a monologue a week later, even after internal Fox communications showed producers knew such allegations were false.
In spite of that record, Pirro’s nomination sailed through the Senate Judiciary Committee, with the help of Tillis, and then the full Senate, again with his support. Her confirmation comes just one month after Tillis voted to confirm Emil Bove, another Trump loyalist whose conduct raised serious alarms.
As acting deputy attorney general, Bove ordered the firing of prosecutors handling January 6 cases. Whistleblowers later alleged Bove misled the Senate under oath, advocated for defying court orders on Trump’s deportation agenda, and played a role in the sudden dismissal of a high-profile corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. He even dodged a basic constitutional question about whether a president can serve a third term and equivocated when asked to denounce the January 6 insurrection.
Despite all of this, Tillis backed Bove’s lifetime appointment to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals – the kind of vote many believed he would avoid after announcing he would not seek reelection. At the time, Tillis claimed that stepping away from electoral politics would give him the “freedom to call the balls and strikes” without pressure from party leadership. But his recent votes tell a different story.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) issued a stark warning ahead of Pirro’s confirmation, urging the Senate to reject her nomination. “Ms. Pirro has made clear that her personal loyalty to Donald Trump overrides whatever commitment she has to the Constitution, the rule of law, the truth, and the facts,” he wrote in a letter to Senate leadership. Raskin reminded colleagues that Pirro had previously encouraged Trump to use the Justice Department to target his political rivals, including Hillary Clinton.
Pirro’s nomination was especially notable for the contrast it drew with Tillis’ past actions. Tillis played a key role in blocking Trump’s nomination of Ed Martin for the same U.S. Attorney post over Martin’s defenses of the Capitol riot. That move won Tillis praise for standing against extremism within his party. But with Pirro and Bove, he appears to have reversed course.
Trump has filled his second administration with a wave of Fox News alumni, and Pirro is now the 23rd to receive a formal nomination, according to Newsweek. That number is likely to grow. The bigger question is whether senators like Tillis, who claim to value independence, will continue to enable it.
