Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox News personality and current U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, is facing mounting criticism and public scrutiny as a series of recent legal setbacks have thrown her leadership—and her prosecutorial judgment—into question. The controversies, which have unfolded in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss and amid a federal crackdown on crime in Washington, D.C., have exposed deep divisions within the legal and media establishments, raising broader concerns about the intersection of politics, the press, and the justice system.
According to The Independent, newly revealed court filings in the $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit brought by voting machine company Smartmatic against Fox News have painted Pirro in a particularly unflattering light. After Trump’s defeat to Joe Biden, Pirro was described by Fox executives in internal communications as “insane,” a “reckless maniac,” and someone with a “tendency to find random conspiracy theories on weird internet sites.” One senior network executive, David Clark, bluntly wrote, “Bottom line, I don’t trust her to be responsible tomorrow. Her guests are all going to say the election is being stolen and if she pushes back at all it will just be a token.”
Such characterizations weren’t isolated. Fox Corp Chairman Lachlan Murdoch and CEO Suzanne Scott both expressed unease about what Pirro and other anchors might say on air as Trump and his allies pushed their claims of a stolen election. Meade Cooper, Fox’s Executive VP for Prime Time, warned Scott, “Pirro has a tendency to find random conspiracy theories on weird internet sites.” Pirro’s former producer, Jerry Andrews, called her a “reckless maniac,” and in a text exchange between two board members, she was simply labeled “insane.”
The filings also reveal that Pirro compared the deplatforming of the Parler app in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riot to Nazi Germany’s Kristallnacht, a comparison that drew particular ire from network leadership. In other records, Pirro boasted to then-Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel about her support for Trump and disparaged fellow Fox anchor Sean Hannity as an “egomaniac” for his behavior at the White House. In a private text to Hannity, Pirro vented, “I’M TIRED OF THE CENSORSHIP AND I’M EMBARRASSED BY HOW THEY CALLED THIS ELECTION.”
Fox, for its part, has pushed back against Smartmatic’s claims. In a statement last month cited by The Independent, the network argued, “The evidence shows that Smartmatic’s business and reputation were badly suffering long before any claims by President Trump’s lawyers on Fox News and that Smartmatic grossly inflated its damage claims to generate headlines and chill free speech. Now, in the aftermath of Smartmatic’s executives getting indicted for bribery charges, we are eager and ready to continue defending our press freedoms.” Pirro herself declined to comment when approached by NPR about the revelations.
But the fallout from these internal criticisms is only one part of the broader storm swirling around Pirro. In her new role as acting U.S. Attorney for D.C., Pirro has faced a string of embarrassing defeats in court—most notably in a case involving Eduardo Alexander Dana, a local man accused of threatening to kill President Trump. On August 17, 2025, Dana allegedly broke a light fixture outside a D.C. restaurant and, while in police custody and reportedly intoxicated, made a series of erratic statements, including threats against the president. Prosecutors argued these were serious threats; Dana’s attorney insisted they were “idle rambling and not true threats.”
Despite Pirro’s tough-on-crime rhetoric—she had vowed “no mercy for criminals” after being sworn in—the case unraveled quickly. A grand jury declined to indict Dana on felony charges, prompting Pirro’s office to drop the federal case and pursue only misdemeanor charges in city court. This was not an isolated incident. As reported by HuffPost and CBS News, this marked at least the sixth time in recent weeks that grand juries in D.C. have rejected felony charges brought by Pirro’s team. In one notable case, a man caught on video throwing a sandwich at a federal agent was ultimately charged only with a misdemeanor after the grand jury refused to indict him on more serious charges.
The pattern of failed prosecutions has not gone unnoticed by the judiciary. U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui, presiding over Dana’s case, issued a scathing rebuke of Pirro’s office. In a court order, Faruqui described the prosecution’s actions as “inexcusable” and demanded to know what remedies would be provided to Dana, including whether his arrest record would be expunged. He quoted the Justice Manual for U.S. Attorneys, which states that prosecutors should not pursue federal cases unless they believe the defendant is likely to be found guilty. “Given that there have been an unprecedented number of cases that the U.S. Attorney dismissed in the past ten days, all of whom were detained for some period of time, the Court is left to question if this principle still applies,” Faruqui wrote.
During a heated hearing, Faruqui went even further, declaring, “we’re past the point of Constitutional crisis,” according to CBS News. He criticized the Justice Department’s actions as potentially setting a dangerous precedent for arbitrary detentions and suggested that Dana was owed an apology for his time in custody. The judge’s remarks underscored the growing concern among legal experts and civil rights advocates about the integrity of legal proceedings in the capital, especially amid what many have described as a politically motivated crackdown on crime ordered by President Trump.
Trump’s declaration of a D.C. “crime emergency” on August 11, 2025, led to the diversion of federal law enforcement agents to patrol city streets alongside the Metropolitan Police Department. This unusual arrangement has resulted in an uptick in encounters between city residents and federal agents—and, according to defense attorneys, a wave of prosecutorial overreach. Several cases have crumbled under judicial scrutiny or grand jury review, with jurors often unconvinced by the government’s evidence or unwilling to endorse felony charges for conduct they deemed minor or unthreatening.
The repeated failures of Pirro’s office have sparked debate across the political spectrum. Supporters of aggressive law enforcement argue that the city’s crime problems require tough measures and that prosecutors should not be deterred by grand jury skepticism. Critics, however, see the pattern of failed indictments as evidence of overreach and political pressure, warning that the pursuit of weak cases wastes public resources and undermines trust in the justice system.
For Pirro, the convergence of these crises—her embattled reputation at Fox, the high-profile court defeats, and the public rebukes from the bench—has created a difficult moment. Whether she can weather this storm and restore confidence in her office remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: the intersection of politics, media, and law in Washington, D.C. has rarely felt more fraught or more consequential.
