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\n Photo: Haiyun Jiang\/The New York Times\/Redux\n <\/p>\n
When Jeanine Pirro<\/a> took over as United States Attorney for the District of Columbia in May of last year, she was surprised to learn that her workspace came with a full bathroom. Even more surprising was what her predecessor, Ed Martin Jr., had left in the shower. \u201cA crucifix,\u201d Pirro whispers with a shudder. \u201cI never shower in it. He had some holy stuff in there.\u201d<\/p>\n We are sitting in an office overlooking Judiciary Square decorated with photos of President Donald Trump<\/a> and cluttered with awards Pirro has won over the years. (\u201cI should bring my Emmy,\u201d she tells me.) When Martin, the district\u2019s acting U.S. Attorney for the first four months of Trump\u2019s second term, failed to get enough Republican support for confirmation, Trump picked Pirro, his longtime friend and a Fox News personality. Martin, a former Stop the Steal organizer, had been on a crusade to purge lawyers who had prosecuted January 6 rioters. Pirro, in contrast, doesn\u2019t seem to have that same religious zeal. \u201cIt was all before me,\u201d she says, crossing her eyes comically when I ask her about Trump\u2019s early decision to pardon J6ers. \u201cI got no comment. None. It was all before me.\u201d<\/p>\n She arrived at her new job with work to do. \u201cI come in here on my first day and there\u2019s, like, nobody,\u201d Pirro says. \u201cI was like, Where is everybody? Then I realized the office was short 150 lawyers. No one was in charge. People had been fired, demoted; senior staff were leaving.\u201d<\/p>\n Pirro turns toward her spokesman, Tim Lauer, who worked for her at Fox News and now sits in the corner minding us. \u201cIs it bad to say it was a mess?\u201d she asks him.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was neglected,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n It might have been a tad worse than that. \u201cIt was like somebody drilled a thousand holes in the ship and literally themselves took water and poured it into the ship,\u201d says a former member of the office. \u201cThat\u2019s what Ed did. And then she became the captain of the sinking ship. She was, at the very least, trying to keep it afloat.\u201d (\u201cOne captain\u2019s sinking ship is another captain\u2019s ship in dry dock,\u201d a person close to Ed Martin says.)<\/p>\n Almost a year into the job, Pirro has plugged some of those holes, hiring more than 100 prosecutors and doubling the number of criminal investigators. She touts lower crime under her watch and a \u201chistoric\u201d number of charges brought by her office. It helps that, before becoming a television star, Pirro spent decades as a prosecutor in Westchester County. Former and current members of her team describe her as competent and hardworking. \u201cShe\u2019s smart and reads the briefing materials,\u201d a former prosecutor who worked for her tells me. \u201cYou\u2019ll brief her and she\u2019ll say, \u2018You think I\u2019m stupid? I fucking read that.\u2019\u201d Her brashness can, on occasion, rub people the wrong way. \u201cIf something didn\u2019t sit right with her, she could go off like a powder keg,\u201d a former employee says, adding she brought a \u201cdivalike\u201d energy to the job. \u201cOnce, I went into her office and she was holding a picture of herself. And she said, \u2018The fans want me to autograph it. You know how many of these I get in a day?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The transition to Washington was something of a culture shock for Pirro, who abandoned a nearly $3 million salary to get paid about $200,000 a year for this job. \u201cI was living the good life at Fox,\u201d she says, leaning forward on her desk, the shoulder pads on her gray blazer jutting out like little wings. \u201cThink about it: hair and makeup every day.\u201d<\/p>\n So why did she leave? In truth, her latter years at Fox were marred by her role in the lawsuits brought against the network and its parent company by the voting-machine companies Smartmatic and Dominion, which partly stemmed from Pirro\u2019s wild claims on her show that the 2020 election was rigged. \u201cThere\u2019s no way she left to be a mid-level appointee in D.C.,\u201d a former Fox News host tells me. \u201cShe probably just figured, The runway isn\u2019t clear at Fox, so we\u2019ll just try this other airport for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n Pirro says she left Fox to pursue justice but so far has struggled to get her biggest new projects off the ground. After six Democratic lawmakers enraged Trump by filming a video reminding active-duty members of the military that they were obligated to refuse illegal orders, it was Pirro who tried to indict the politicians. Her team failed to get even one member of the grand jury to go for it, a highly unusual and embarrassing result. And in March, a judge blocked Pirro\u2019s attempts to subpoena Federal Reserve records as part of her investigation into central-bank chief Jerome Powell<\/a>, who has angered Trump by refusing to lower interest rates. \u201cThere is abundant evidence that the subpoenas\u2019 dominant (if not sole) purpose is to harass and pressure Powell either to yield to the President or to resign and make way for a Fed Chair who will,\u201d the judge wrote.<\/p>\n If Pirro is famous for anything these days, it\u2019s her willingness to obey Trump. \u201cShe\u2019ll do what Trump wants,\u201d the former prosecutor says. \u201cI don\u2019t think she\u2019s malicious like Ed Martin. I don\u2019t think she\u2019s evil like Pam Bondi<\/a>. She\u2019s an opportunist who likes the limelight.\u201d Her tenure is less Martin\u2019s vendetta-driven holy war than an audition for a job that will allow this 74-year-old to enjoy one last triumphant star turn. Now that the much-beleaguered Bondi has been fired<\/a>, people who know Pirro say she wants the job of attorney general. \u201cThe judge is very close to the president, talks to him all the time,\u201d a source familiar says. \u201cAnd she\u2019d been trying to put the knife in Bondi, saying she\u2019s not a prosecutor and doesn\u2019t have control of the building.\u201d Trump is considering replacements for Bondi, including EPA administrator Lee Zeldin and acting attorney general Todd Blanche<\/a>.<\/p>\n When asked if Pirro is on the list to replace Bondi, Trump tells me over the phone that both women are \u201cgreat people. Jeanine Pirro\u2019s fantastic, but they\u2019re both great people.\u201d And Pirro denies such ambitions. Taking this post wasn\u2019t so much about her future, she says, as her past. \u201cEveryone said to me, \u2018I can\u2019t believe you gave it up,\u2019\u201d Pirro says about the career change. \u201cBut what they don\u2019t understand is that it wasn\u2019t what I gave up; it was that I got to go back to who I was. I get to be Jeanine again.\u201d<\/p>\n \n As Westchester County DA in 2002. In 1977, Pirro was a 26-year-old deputy DA and already a pioneer. She had learned that the Carter administration planned to establish bureaus specifically designed to prosecute domestic-violence cases, and her boss, Westchester district attorney Carl Vergari, let her run the county\u2019s unit \u2014 one of just four in the country. Domestic violence, at the time, was often thought of as a family matter rather than as a criminal one, and Pirro dedicated her life to changing that.<\/p>\n Seventeen years later, on her first day as Vergari\u2019s successor, the newspaper heiress Anne Scripps Douglas was found bludgeoned in her Bronxville home and died shortly thereafter. For Pirro, leaping into action meant not only running the investigation but also becoming a regular presence on television, first to talk about the case, then to talk about pretty much any true-crime story of national interest: the O.\u2009J. Simpson trial, the JonBen\u00e9t Ramsey murder. \u201cShe always played hardball seeking publicity,\u201d Vergari told this magazine in 1999. \u201cShe\u2019s a bright and capable woman. But she\u2019s also very self-centered in everything she does. She was aggressive about the breadth of her responsibilities in the office, and that caused conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n Pirro was a Republican, but the Pirro of this period would hardly fit in with the party today. She was a pro-choice Catholic who made a concerted effort to diversify her office in terms of race, gender, and political affiliation. She was known to outhustle her colleagues. \u201cShe worked seven days a week, from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.,\u201d David Hebert, a former assistant DA and spokesman for Pirro, tells me. \u201cWhen I would get in, there would be somewhere between 10 and 15 phone messages from her of things I needed to get done that day.\u201d<\/p>\n Pirro was accustomed to the good life, having married her law-school sweetheart, Al Pirro Jr., in 1975. Al was a local power broker owing to his role as Donald Trump\u2019s real-estate lawyer. \u201cI called them \u2018the King and Queen of Westchester,\u2019\u201d says Bennett Gershman, a former prosecutor. Trump kept Al on retainer to help develop golf courses and battle zoning regulations. In 1996, Trump left the sixth and final game of the World Series to attend a costume-party fundraiser for Jeanine at which the DA was dressed as Spain\u2019s Queen Isabella in a black velvet gown. \u201cI was at the ball game with George Steinbrenner and it was great, just great,\u201d Trump said, according to a New York Times report. \u201cBut this,\u201d he said, gesturing to the crowd, \u201cis just great, too.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe used to call at all hours of the night looking for Al,\u201d Pirro tells me. \u201cAnd I remember saying, This guy doesn\u2019t sleep. He was charming and engaging and always trying to build you up.\u201d In 1999, Trump told New York that Pirro was \u201csexy as hell.\u201d<\/p>\n As it turned out, the Pirros\u2019 royal lifestyle was partly built on ill-gotten gains. In 2000, Al was found guilty of taking improper tax deductions \u2014 including for a $123,000 Ferrari, $13,250 for a Chinese rug, and $1,800 for a wrought-iron fence for the couple\u2019s Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs, Wilbur and Homer \u2014 totaling $1.2 million. Al was sentenced to 29 months in prison. \u201cShe signed all the returns,\u201d Gershman says. \u201cDid she know what her husband was doing? I\u2019m positive she did. The federal government just didn\u2019t want to bring her in because it made the case against Al more complicated.\u201d (Pirro was not charged with wrongdoing and, according to her spokesperson, was declared an innocent spouse by the government.)<\/p>\n Trump went \u201cabove and beyond\u201d to help Pirro and her two young children while Al was locked up, according to Hebert. When Al was sent to prison in Florida, Trump flew with Jeanine and her family to Palm Beach on his private plane. \u201cWe had the Pirro table on the plane for the Pirro kids,\u201d she tells me. \u201cThey put a leather cover on it because my kids were little and he didn\u2019t want the table to get messed up.\u201d Pirro also mentioned visiting Mar-a-Lago since before it was turned into a private club. She loved the opulence of the place, taking a special interest in the kitchen cabinets stocked with china. \u201cThey had this ladder you pushed across the floor,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI just kept opening the cabinets \u2014 dishes with coral, dishes with lapis and turquoise, dishes with gold, dishes that were painted. It was unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAt a time that was very difficult for Jeanine, he was a person that overextended himself to her, caring for her, loyal to her and supportive to her and her family,\u201d Hebert says. \u201cI appreciated that she had people like that in her orbit.\u201d<\/p>\n Pirro appreciated it too. \u201cDonald Trump is as loyal as they come,\u201d she says. \u201cHe was a kind man. I grew to \u2014 I don\u2019t want to use the word love \u2014 to really respect and like him.\u201d<\/p>\n \n With Donald Trump in 2001; Pirro chose to share the image on Instagram in 2015, publicly affirming her long-standing relationship with the then-candidate. \u201cShe was really cool back then,\u201d says the writer Lisa DePaulo, who profiled Pirro for The New York Times Magazine in 1999. \u201cShe was a really fun, cool chick.\u201d DePaulo\u2019s article was a sympathetic account of life inside the Pirro marriage: Al\u2019s embarrassments, Jeanine\u2019s resilience, the whole operatic mess. The story functioned, DePaulo says, as both a portrait of a serious career woman and a \u201cfuck husbands\u201d fable. After it was published, Pirro invited DePaulo over for dinner at her Westchester manse, where they were joined by other New York luminaries like gossip columnist Cindy Adams and Governor George Pataki. \u201cIt was a really fun dinner party,\u201d DePaulo says. \u201cShe cooked everything.\u201d<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t take long for the two to become friendly. \u201cI remember standing in front of Elaine\u2019s smoking, and she was talking about how she didn\u2019t have sex for so long,\u201d DePaulo recalls. \u201cAnd then she said, \u2018You know what? The less you have, the less you want.\u2019 She was funny and wise, a real girl\u2019s girl.\u201d<\/p>\n Pirro\u2019s political career never found its second act. In 2005, she announced she was going to run against Senator Hillary Clinton as a Republican moderate. But the headlines after her first campaign event focused on an awkward 32-second pause that resulted from a missing page in her speech. By the year\u2019s end, she had dropped out of the race. Worse still were headlines that emerged a year later, when Jeanine was caught talking about planting a recording device on her husband\u2019s boat to catch Al in the act of cheating. \u201cBug This Love Boat,\u201d read the Daily News cover. (She separated from Al in 2007.)<\/p>\n Pirro parlayed her talking-head experience into a syndicated court show and then a role as an anchor on Fox News. Adding to her stardom was the newfound interest in real-estate heir Robert Durst\u2019s suspected murder of his first wife, Kathie, who had disappeared in 1982. As DA, Pirro had reopened an investigation into Durst. The case got renewed attention with the 2015 smash-hit HBO documentary series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst. A book deal followed. \u201cShe called and said, \u2018I want you to write my book with me,\u2019\u201d DePaulo recalls. \u201cIt was going to be a great experience. And it wasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n That summer, with a deadline looming, DePaulo moved into the basement of Pirro\u2019s sprawling Westchester home. When she was getting her makeup done, DePaulo says, Pirro would pad around the house wearing nothing but \u201cpanties, high heels, and these little stickers that she put on her nipples,\u201d which DePaulo found amusing. But her stay turned out to be a less-than-comfortable experience. DePaulo had to deal with mice in the basement (a problem that, according to DePaulo, Pirro demanded she keep to herself since Pirro was trying to sell the house); seven guns stashed around, which, DePaulo recalls Pirro saying, were all loaded; Pirro barring her from touching the Fiji water in the pantry, saying it was for guests only; and Pirro\u2019s obsession with keeping household expenses down (DePaulo says Pirro once berated her for leaving a hallway light on overnight).<\/p>\n Worst of all was that DePaulo started to feel like the help. There were numerous times, she says, when Pirro asked her to clean up dog feces deposited by Pirro\u2019s enormous poodles. (\u201cMy dogs, when they poop, it\u2019s, like, sick,\u201d Pirro tells me.) According to DePaulo, there was also the time that she was invited to a wedding held at the house and told to clean the windows before the guests arrived. \u201cThat was demeaning,\u201d DePaulo says. \u201cI was dressed for the wedding, and she hands me this big thing of Windex and paper towels, pushed them into my hands, and said, \u2018Do it!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Ultimately DePaulo\u2019s partnership with Pirro unraveled because of the work. In a lawsuit filed by DePaulo, the writer argued that Pirro had \u201clittle regard for truth and accuracy\u201d when writing her Durst book. DePaulo also claimed that Pirro was in breach of contract and owed her $28,750. \u201cLisa DePaulo is a disgruntled former employee,\u201d Pirro\u2019s agent said at the time. \u201cShe was fired for nonperformance. She\u2019s doing this for the money and it\u2019s sad.\u201d A judge moved the case to arbitration, and DePaulo never recovered anything.<\/p>\n In response, Pirro\u2019s office denies DePaulo\u2019s claims, saying that her home was free of mice, she would never discuss her private life with a reporter or walk around in underwear and heels, and she did not ask DePaulo to clean windows or pick up dog poop. \u201cThe woman rarely knew the difference between night and day,\u201d Lauer, Pirro\u2019s spokesman, says of DePaulo.<\/p>\n Still, when DePaulo looks back on that summer now, the mice and Windex and loaded guns feel almost beside the point. Something else was happening in that house. \u201cShe was evolving into the Trumper she is now,\u201d DePaulo says. When Trump first announced he was running for president, Pirro would laugh about it, DePaulo says. But as the former reality-TV star went from fringe candidate to legitimate contender for the presidency, Pirro\u2019s posture changed dramatically, according to DePaulo. \u201cShe would write her opening for the show with me around,\u201d DePaulo says. \u201cAnd she started getting progressively more rabid, almost frothing at the mouth. The more it became possible that he could have a chance, the more she glommed on to him.\u201d By the time DePaulo left the basement, she believed the funny, wise girl\u2019s girl she knew was gone. (Pirro\u2019s office denies this recollection and says that DePaulo was fantasizing.)<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s sad to me,\u201d DePaulo says. \u201cDid she sell out for Trump, or did the inner Jeanine emerge?\u201d<\/p>\n \n With FBI director Kash Patel and then\u2013Attorney General Pam Bondi in February. By 2020, Pirro was the star of her own highly rated weekend show on Fox News. She was also, according to a text from network executive Jerry Andrews, a \u201creckless maniac.\u201d<\/p>\n For years, she played the role of Trump booster on television. She stood by Trump in the wake of the 2016 Access Hollywood tape, in which he bragged about sexually assaulting women. Trump repaid the favor in 2019 when Fox News briefly pulled Pirro off the air for asking if Representative Ilhan Omar\u2019s wearing a hijab was \u201cantithetical to the United States Constitution.\u201d Trump tweeted, \u201cBring back @JudgeJeanine Pirro\u201d \u2014 a wake-up call to management, a former Fox News employee tells me. \u201cOnce they saw how close she was to him, she was kind of protected,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was good for her.\u201d<\/p>\n When Trump started claiming that the 2020 election was going to be stolen from him, Pirro amplified the message. \u201cI work so hard for the President and the party,\u201d she texted then\u2013Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel in September 2020, according to filings from the Smartmatic lawsuit. Pirro would regularly parrot conspiracy theories and host key election skeptics like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani on her show, which increasingly freaked out management.<\/p>\n \u201cBottom line, I don\u2019t trust her to be responsible tomorrow,\u201d Fox News senior VP David Clark texted fellow executive Meade Cooper on November 6, 2020.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe she does not have a show tomorrow night,\u201d Cooper responded.<\/p>\n Michael Edelman, a friend and former prosecutor who worked with Vergari in the Westchester DA\u2019s office and later did consulting work for Pirro, tried to get her to stop. \u201cI told her, \u2018You\u2019re doing a great disservice to the United States,\u2019\u201d he tells me. \u201cShe went ballistic, telling me, \u2018You were never any good; I never should have used you as a consultant.\u2019 It went on and on.\u201d (Pirro\u2019s office denies this.)<\/p>\n Messages about Pirro were flying behind her back at Fox, which she got to see only once they were made public in legal filings. One Fox executive complained about her \u201ctendency to find random conspiracy theories on weird internet sites.\u201d A corporate board member called a public statement of hers \u201cinsane.\u201d It\u2019s not clear she believed any of it; Pirro testified under oath that Trump had lost a \u201cfair and free\u201d election.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody talked about everybody else, and that all came out. I said some things about people too,\u201d Pirro says with a shrug. One of her texts referred to Sean Hannity as an \u201cegomaniac.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2022, Fox News shuttered Pirro\u2019s weekend show and made her a co-host of The Five. \u201cIt was sort of a promotion because The Five had a lot more viewers,\u201d one former colleague says. \u201cBut it was also sort of a demotion because the show no longer had her name on it.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the years, Pirro had shown signs that she would be willing to leave the network for the right job. Ahead of the first Trump administration, Pirro had told his aides that she wanted to be attorney general. When it became clear that the job was going to Jeff Sessions, she pushed to be his deputy. Word going around at the time was that the Fox News personality couldn\u2019t pass the laugh test as a serious government official. Fortunately for Pirro, the only test that really matters now is the loyalty one.<\/p>\n In March, reporters asked Pirro how she decided to pursue an investigation into Jerome Powell\u2019s renovation of the Fed\u2019s headquarters, which Trump had claimed was tainted by corruption and incompetence. \u201cI\u2019ll deal with the Devil!\u201d Pirro nearly shouted. \u201cI\u2019ll take a case from the Devil if you can give me information that will lead me to possibly find a crime! It doesn\u2019t matter where a case comes from.\u201d<\/p>\n No one had asked whether the Devil made her do it, but it remains an open question whether the president had. \u201cHe took a little building and spent $4 billion trying to build it \u2014 that\u2019s, to me, a scandal,\u201d Trump tells me. \u201cHe ruined the building. He took down all of the beautiful walls and the beautiful ceilings and couldn\u2019t put it back together again.\u201d Trump has been trashing Powell for months about interest rates. In early January, Trump invited a group of U.S. Attorneys to the White House and blasted them for failing to pursue his enemies quickly enough. \u201cU.S. Attorneys do not go to the White House,\u201d a former employee who worked in Pirro\u2019s office tells me. \u201cIt\u2019s a conflict of interest and presents all kinds of bad optics. But Martin was down there on a regular basis, and Pirro started making those trips as well. The only reason for that would be for Trump or his henchmen to tell the U.S. Attorney who to prosecute.\u201d<\/p>\n The following day, she issued the grand-jury subpoenas to the Federal Reserve. Steven Vandervelden, a special counsel in the U.S. Attorney\u2019s office and one of Pirro\u2019s top confidants, maintains the subpoenas went out independently of any White House pressure and that any implication otherwise is \u201cbullshit.\u201d He says it\u2019s the other side playing politics. In a meeting in late January with the attorneys for the Federal Reserve and Powell, Vandervelden says Powell\u2019s counsel suggested that if Pirro dropped the investigation, Powell would likely leave the Board of Governors after his term as chair concluded. \u201cYou\u2019re in the political lane,\u201d Pirro responded, according to Vandervelden. \u201cI\u2019m in the legal lane.\u201d The Fed declined to comment for this story, but in a legal filing from this case, the central bank\u2019s lawyers did respond to this specific allegation. \u201cTo the extent that the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office suggests that chair Powell, through his counsel, offered to resign in exchange for dropping the probe, that is incorrect,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n An administration official tells me that Pirro calls the president regularly. \u201cSometimes when people think a move of hers is a bad idea, she will call the president and position it in such a way that he\u2019ll say, \u2018Oh, that sounds great,\u2019\u201d the official says. But Pirro bristles at the implication that she lacks independence from Trump. \u201cDonald Trump is very clear about what he thinks and what he wants,\u201d Pirro tells me. \u201cBut my job is to make a decision as a prosecutor about what is worth looking into.\u201d She continues, \u201cI have 32 years in this business; I\u2019m not some fly-by-night dilettante who decided that she\u2019s going to be a prosecutor because she\u2019s good-looking or because she speaks well.\u201d Likewise, Pirro claims the case against the six Democratic lawmakers had nothing to do with the president calling their statements \u201ctreasonous\u201d in one social-media post and \u201cSEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH\u201d in another.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole world is talking about treason and sedition,\u201d she tells me, exasperated. \u201cThat\u2019s not where I was.\u201d That the grand jury unanimously rejected the indictment was of little concern to her. \u201cThey deliberated for a significant amount of time,\u201d she says and shrugs. \u201cThey made it very clear that this was something they had trouble with.\u201d Trump says, \u201cShe was put into an area that was very tough and unfair. Judges who are haters. Almost impossible to win a case.\u201d<\/p>\n Her setbacks seem to have bothered just about everybody else. The Powell investigation irked White House officials and led Republican senator Thom Tillis to threaten to oppose the nomination of Kevin Warsh to replace the Fed chairman. \u201cThe Powell investigation will probably fail and make her look bad for overpromising and pursuing it, but I\u2019m sure she thinks she will earn goodwill for fighting,\u201d a senior White House official tells me. \u201cIn the meantime, it will slow down the confirmation of Warsh. Which means one of her signature efforts to date will be a failure with added downside for the administration. Not a recipe for success.\u201d In March, one of Pirro\u2019s top prosecutors admitted in a closed-door hearing that they had no evidence of misconduct by Powell.<\/p>\n Pirro is unbothered, or at least performs being unbothered with considerable conviction. \u201cEveryone is having a conniption,\u201d she says. \u201cDeal with it!\u201d She claims to pay no mind to the \u201cbullshit\u201d that comes with the job. \u201cI don\u2019t really care about half the nonsense that goes on in this place,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n At this point, I decide to put her independence to the test. \u201cIf Donald Trump were to shoot someone in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue,\u201d I ask her, \u201cwould you prosecute him?\u201d<\/p>\n Pirro leans back in her chair and thinks for a moment.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll use Donald Trump\u2019s own words,\u201d she starts to say before looking over to Lauer, her media handler. \u201cYou\u2019re going, \u2018No,\u2019\u201d she says to him.<\/p>\n \u201cThis should focus on our office and our work,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t know we should be getting into hypotheticals.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTim\u2019s going to kill me,\u201d she says. \u201cDo you know what I\u2019m going to say?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, I know what you\u2019re going to say,\u201d Lauer says. \u201cIt\u2019s off the record, and you\u2019re not using it.\u201d<\/p>\n Pirro looks at me, then back at him. \u201cThen I\u2019m not going to say it if he doesn\u2019t want me to.\u201d<\/p>\n Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism.![\"Jeanine](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/a990884ff7072ec7591d1cdc86cdc612c8-secondary-1.rvertical.w570.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Ben Baker\/Redux\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/052cad0c9df8ce5cf95299fa2d3da2d92d-secondary-2.rsquare.w570.png\")
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\n Photo: @Judge_Jeanine\/Instagram\n <\/p>\n![\"Man](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1d2317b0e576d22981aec12e55ea5d1b29-secondary-3.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Aaron Schwartz\/Bloomberg\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
\n If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the April 6, 2026, issue of
\n New York\u00a0Magazine.<\/p>\n