Trump Pick Pirro Confirmed as Top Federal Prosecutor for D.C.

Former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro was confirmed as the chief federal prosecutor for Washington, the first of President Donald Trump’s controversial picks for US attorney roles to win Senate approval.

The GOP-led chamber voted 50-45 on Saturday to confirm Pirro. She’s held the job on an acting basis since Trump’s first nominee for the job, Ed Martin, withdrew after failing to gain enough Republican support.

Democrats opposed her nomination over concerns about her record, including her past remarks denying the results of the 2020 presidential election that Joe Biden won.

Pirro’s among several Trump appointees who previously worked for the conservative Fox News Channel. Pirro previously was district attorney in New York’s Westchester County from 1993 to 2006 and served as a county court judge in New York.

During her tenure as interim chief prosecutor, the D.C. US attorney’s office filed charges against a man accused of fatally shooting two Israeli Embassy employees outside the Capital Jewish Museum in May. Washington prosecutors also announced the seizure of $225.3 million in cryptocurrency as part of an alleged money laundering network.

Her confirmation was relatively swift and comes as the Trump administration seeks to install long-term US attorneys across the Justice Department. Such efforts have run into gridlock in blue states, where under Senate custom nominees must gain the approval of home-state senators to advance.

But the White House has in the meantime used its powers to appoint acting and interim officials to keep Trump-aligned prosecutors in their positions in New York, New Jersey, Nevada, and California.

In New Jersey, Trump fired a prosecutor federal judges tapped to replace his former personal attorney Alina Habba after her 120-day interim term expired. He then cited the Federal Vacancies Reform Act to keep Habba in the role on an acting basis, a move that is now being challenged by a criminal defendant charged by Habba’s office.