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Donald Trump will appoint Fox News host Jeanine Pirro interim US attorney for the District of Columbia, the latest twist at one of the country’s most high-profile enforcement bureaus.
The US president on Thursday said in a post on his Truth Social platform that Pirro was “in a class by herself”, noting her former role as district attorney for Westchester County, New York, and her current work on television, a career often admired by Trump.
Pirro’s appointment is the latest personnel shake-up in the prominent US attorney’s office in Washington. She replaces Ed Martin, a Trump loyalist who has supported rioters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6 2021, as head of the bureau.
Martin in recent months came to the defence of Trump’s supporters and railed against his perceived opponents. He said he would pursue legal action against “anyone who impedes” the work of Elon Musk, the Tesla boss turned Trump confidant, and warned Jack Smith, the former special counsel who oversaw federal probes against the US president, to “save” his “receipts”.
Denise Cheung, a veteran federal prosecutor, in February resigned from the US attorney’s office in Washington after declining superior’s orders to launch a probe into whether a federal agency had illegally awarded a contract during ex-president Joe Biden’s administration.
Cheung said she had not found enough evidence to launch an investigation, while Martin insisted there was “sufficient” evidence to do so. Her move was broadly seen as an act of resistance against an administration that has taken aim at prosecutors, including government lawyers who worked on cases targeting Trump.
Trump said in a social media post that Martin had “done an AMAZING job” and that he would become the Department of Justice’s new “Director of the Weaponization Working Group” to probe alleged government misuse under Biden.
A keen Trump supporter, Pirro’s posts on X shower praise over the White House, at times repeating its own slogans. “If the first 100 days of Trump tells us anything, it’s that the American people voted him in to do EXACTLY what’s he’s doing. Promises made and promises kept!!” she wrote last month.
Pirro is a co-host of Fox programme “The Five”, which Trump said in his social media post was “one of the Highest Rated Shows on Television”.
Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to the president, welcomed Pirro’s appointment, saying in a post on X: “Now this is going to be fun. BIGLY. [Pirro] cleaning up the Swamp for President [Trump].”
The US attorney’s office in Washington, Fox News, Martin and Pirro did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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