President Trump said on Thursday that he would name the Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro, whose false statements about the 2020 election were part of a lawsuit against the network, the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, hours after he was forced to pull his first choice.
Selecting Ms. Pirro, the former Republican district attorney of Westchester County, N.Y., resolves a thorny dilemma for the president, who said hours earlier that he would withdraw his nomination to permanently install the interim U.S. attorney, Ed Martin, under pressure from Senate Republicans.
“During her time in office, Jeanine was a powerful crusader for victims of crime,” the president wrote on social media in announcing the pick, listing her background in law enforcement. He added, “She is in a class by herself.”
The move raised legal questions. Mr. Trump appeared to be relying on an aggressive interpretation of his appointment powers, and his installation of Ms. Pirro could face a legal challenge. A ruling striking down her appointment could disrupt criminal cases brought on her authority, while one upholding it would expand Mr. Trump’s power to bypass the Senate.
Ms. Pirro, 73, has known the president for decades, has earned his trust and would provide him with a reliable line into one of the country’s most important federal prosecutors offices in the Justice Department.
Ms. Pirro has not held a law enforcement job in the two decades since she stepped down as district attorney to pursue bids for higher office, including an ill-fated run against Hillary Clinton for Senate before the 2006 election.
Ms. Pirro has several attributes that have endeared her to Mr. Trump: She is on his television every day, defending him with husky-voiced vehemence as a member of “The Five” talk show on Fox; she incurred personal risk to trumpet his election lies; and she is apparently willing to ditch a lucrative TV career, on short notice, to bail him out of an embarrassing jam.
Ms. Pirro has far greater name recognition than Mr. Martin, a relatively obscure right-wing activist from Missouri, thanks to stints as her reality TV counterpart “Judge Jeanine” on the CW Network and Fox.
But she shares a similar penchant for partisan combat.
Like Mr. Martin, she supports Mr. Trump’s efforts to exact vengeance on his political enemies, has backed his challenges to federal judges who have questioned the legality of his immigration policies and spent months protesting the legitimacy of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s election to the presidency in 2020.
Ms. Pirro was among the Fox hosts named in a lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems for questioning the validity of ballot tabulations on Fox’s broadcasts. Fox settled the case and was forced to acknowledge that statements by Ms. Pirro and others were false.
She has staunchly defended Mr. Trump, offering him her support when he needed it most, particularly in the days leading up to the 2016 election when an outtake from “Access Hollywood” threatened to overwhelm his campaign.
He has also proved to be a reliable ally to her family. In 2021, during the final hours of his first term, Mr. Trump pardoned Ms. Pirro’s former husband — and Mr. Trump’s onetime lawyer — Albert J. Pirro Jr., who was convicted of conspiracy and tax evasion charges in 2000.
By replacing one interim U.S. attorney with another, the Trump administration appears to be trying a legal tactic that could essentially eliminate any need to submit U.S. attorney picks to the Senate for confirmation.
But the move runs the risk that criminal defendants indicted in Washington after May 20, when Mr. Martin’s 120-day appointment expires, could challenge their prosecution on the grounds that Ms. Pirro had not been lawfully appointed. In a similar situation, a court struck down certain actions that the Department of Homeland Security took in Mr. Trump’s first term, ruling that he had unlawfully appointed Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II to lead U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The issue turns on the federal law that gives the president the power to appoint anyone as an interim U.S. attorney for 120 days when that position is vacant. It also says that if the appointment expires, a federal court can appoint its own choice as interim top prosecutor until there is a Senate-confirmed official.
The traditional understanding of that law is that it gives the president a one-time 120-day window, after which the courts can appoint someone. To be sure, Mr. Trump would not be limited to the court’s choice: He could immediately fire anyone he did not like.
But after 120 days, he would be limited to naming an acting U.S. attorney under a different law, the Vacancies Reform Act. That would narrow his choices to someone the Senate had already confirmed to another position in his administration, or who had been a senior Justice Department official for at least 90 days before the position became vacant — effectively meaning someone who served in the Biden administration.
The administration has not publicly explained how it believes Mr. Trump has the lawful authority to appoint Ms. Pirro. But the most obvious theory, legal experts said, is that because Mr. Martin would leave just before reaching 120 days, his term technically never would have expired and so Mr. Trump could start over.
Should courts uphold Ms. Pirro’s appointment, Mr. Trump would just need to change U.S. attorneys every 119 days to choose whomever he likes without Senate vetting, perhaps even by swapping the same people among different districts.
Fox News said Ms. Pirro would step down from the network immediately, calling her “a longtime beloved host across Fox News Media who contributed greatly to our success throughout her 14-year tenure.”
Ms. Pirro, a native of Elmira, N.Y., attended Albany Law School and earned a reputation as an aggressive, self-promotional prosecutor who focused on domestic violence cases.
Over the years, her name has appeared on short lists for a variety of Trump administration appointments, including attorney general and the Supreme Court.
ABC News earlier reported that Ms. Pirro was under consideration to be the U.S. attorney in Washington.
Mr. Trump said on Thursday that he would move Mr. Martin into new roles in the Justice Department, making him associate deputy attorney general and pardon attorney. The administration had fired the previous pardon attorney amid a dispute about whether to restore the gun rights of the actor Mel Gibson, who has a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction.
Mr. Martin will also become the director of the “Weaponization Working Group,” an effort that is purportedly intended to root out “abuses of the criminal justice process” by local and federal law enforcement officers but that appears to provide the president a lever to exact retribution against his perceived enemies.
Michael M. Grynbaum contributed reporting.
