SEN. THOM TILLIS OF NORTH CAROLINA, a Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, drew a line in the sand during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper last week. “The president should know if there is anyone coming up for a nomination through any committee of my jurisdiction that excused January 6th that they’re not going to get confirmed in my remaining tenure in the U.S. Senate,” Tillis said.
If Tillis sticks to his standard, then he will seek to block the Senate’s confirmation of Jeanine Pirro—President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as the top federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C. Pirro currently serves as the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to vote on her controversial nomination on July 17.
Tillis refused to confirm Trump’s prior nominee for the same post, Ed Martin, citing his defense of January 6th rioters. “We have to be very, very clear that what happened on January 6th was wrong,” Tillis said in May. “It was not prompted or created by other people to put those people in trouble. They made a stupid decision, and they disgraced the United States by absolutely destroying the Capitol.”
If Tillis reviews Pirro’s prolific public media appearances, then he’ll find that Pirro, like Martin, has also “excused January 6th.”
Pirro has defended Trump’s sweeping pardon of the January 6th defendants and convicts, claiming they were “hostages.” She has asserted that they were prosecuted by the Department of Justice “based upon their political beliefs” and dismissed the violence at the U.S. Capitol as a Biden administration “narrative.”
Pirro has also criticized a Trump-appointed judge’s decision to sentence Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, to twenty-two years in prison. She pointed out that Tarrio, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and other serious charges, was not physically present at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. But she ignored the overwhelming evidence of Tarrio’s key leadership role.
“Mr. Tarrio was the ultimate leader of that conspiracy. Mr. Tarrio was the ultimate leader, the ultimate person who organized, who was motivated by revolutionary zeal,” U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, said as he sentenced Tarrio. “That conspiracy ended up with about two hundred men amped up for battle encircling the Capitol.”
Judge Kelly also found that Tarrio’s “conduct constituted an official act of terrorism and applied an enhancement to his final sentence,” according to a DOJ summary of the case. In January, Tarrio was pardoned by Trump, along with nearly all of the other January 6th convicts and defendants.
In addition, as first reported by CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck, Pirro has endorsed calls to criminally investigate the prosecutors who brought the January 6th defendants to justice. Many of those same prosecutors have worked in the office she now runs.
Pirro started her career as a domestic-violence prosecutor before serving as a county court judge and then district attorney in Westchester County, New York. In 2006, she lost the race for New York state attorney general to Andrew Cuomo. In the years that followed she relaunched her career as a bombastic media personality and Trump loyalist, with a show on Fox News and a radio program on WABC in New York.
Pirro used those media platforms to spread conspiracy theories and, ultimately, excuse the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“But she is crazy”: Pirro promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election
Pirro used her media presence to bolster bogus conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, including that Dominion Voting Systems’s ballot-counting machines had flipped votes from Trump to Joe Biden. Pirro’s Fox News show was cited in Dominion’s defamation suit against the network, which the two parties settled for a staggering $787 million.
Dominion alleged that Fox News producers canceled Pirro’s November 7, 2020 show because her guests were promoting the stolen-election narrative. “They took her off cuz she was being crazy. Optics are bad. But she is crazy,” a Fox News producer was quoted as saying about Pirro (emphasis in original).
Nevertheless, Fox News allowed Pirro to air her show one week later and she used that opportunity to push more nonsense.
“The Dominion Software System has been tagged as one allegedly capable of flipping votes,” Pirro said during the November 14, 2020 episode of her show. “Now, you’ll hear from Sidney Powell in a few minutes, who will explain what she has unearthed in the creation of Dominion.” Pirro conceded that Dominion had “denied” the allegations of vote-flipping, but she indulged Powell in her fantasies at length regardless. Powell falsely claimed the money used to create vote-counting software “came out of Venezuela and Cuba” and “was created for the express purpose of being able to alter votes and secure the re- election of Hugo Chávez and then [Nicolás] Maduro.”
Powell’s allegations were, quite simply, false. And Dominion Voting Systems cited ample evidence showing that Fox News knew Powell’s claims were false—with others at the cable network allegedly describing her as “nuts” and a “F’ing lunatic,” with her claims about Venezuela being “crazy stuff.”
Pirro called for the Department of Justice to investigate Powell’s claims. After Powell argued her conspiracy theory “should be investigated by military intelligence for its national security implications,” Pirro responded: “Yes, and hopefully, the Department of Justice, but who knows anymore.”
“Sidney Powell, good luck on your mission,” Pirro said.
Pirro’s own producer reportedly found her script for another show that same month to be “so alarming, he decided to warn his bosses about it.” The producer, Jerry Andrews, wrote in a November 20, 2020 email: “It’s rife with conspiracy theories and BS and is yet another example why this woman should never be on live television.”
Pirro likened the January 6th joint session of Congress to a battle during the American Revolution
Pirro began the January 2, 2021 episode of her Fox News show with a call to action. She placed the joint session of Congress four days hence in the context of the American Revolution.
“You know, it was on New Year’s Eve, on the frozen banks of the Delaware River, two hundred and forty-five years ago, that General George Washington’s soldiers were freezing cold,” Pirro said.1 “They were hungry, without pay, facing almost certain defeat and no longer interested in fighting. They had one more day of their commission before they could go home. They weren’t interested in fighting, and they weren’t even interested in the pay that Washington offered them.”
“So, Washington dismounted his white horse, looked them in the eye and talked about their moment in history and fighting for freedom of justice,” Pirro continued. “With 3 percent of the population fighting for independence against tyranny, domination and control, these hungry, tired, cold, defeated soldiers knew that it was their moment to stand up and fight for freedom.”2
“To many, January 6th is such a moment,” Pirro said. “It cannot be denied that all the bellwethers were upset, that the irregularities were beyond minimal, as we are all being told to simply shut up and move on.”
Pirro then closed her opening: “January 6th will tell us whether there are any in Congress willing to battle for the America that those soldiers fought for, the one that you and I believe in.”
Dismissed violence on January 6th as a Biden administration “narrative”
At first, Pirro was critical of the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. During the opening of her January 9, 2021 show, Pirro said the “actions three days ago at the United States Capitol were deplorable, reprehensible, outright criminal.” She continued: “These frightening and repulsive actions represent the most significant breach on our Capitol in over two hundred years.” Pirro harshly criticized members of the mob who stormed the Capitol as “freaks,” saying “five people are dead in your wake” and “countless injured.”
Within months, Pirro was backtracking on her criticism of January 6th. During her WABC radio show on October 10, 2021, Pirro agreed with a caller who criticized the Biden administration handling of January 6th. Pirro responded:
So, what you’re saying is that what Merrick Garland is doing here is . . . pretty bad. And the truth is that it’s language. It’s a narrative. And we’ve been watching it since a day and before Joe Biden walked into office. What they do is they create a narrative, they say January 6th was violent, it was dangerous, when, you know, Ashley Babbitt was shot and killed. She was an army veteran. And, you know, they still didn’t, I don’t know did they tell us who actually killed her uh. . . . Was it a Capitol Police Officer and that was it?
Therefore, Pirro implied that Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter who shared QAnon conspiracy theories online, was the only real victim of January 6th. Babbitt’s story is tragic because she was misled into believing that the election’s results could be overturned on January 6, 2021. She was shot as she attempted to crawl through a smashed glass door leading to the Speaker’s Lobby of the Capitol, just steps away from where members of Congress were being evacuated.
Pirro’s insinuation that the identity of the Capitol Police officer who shot Babbitt was being withheld is strange—and wrong. That officer, Lt. Michael Byrd, had spoken out months earlier. “I am afraid, because I know there are people who disagree with my actions,” Byrd told NBC News in August 2021. “I know that that day I saved countless lives.”
Accused the DOJ of jailing January 6th rioters “based upon their political beliefs”
CNN first reported on a January 2025 episode of Pirro’s radio show, during which Pirro interviewed Mike Davis, another controversial lawyer and Trump supporter. Pirro asked Davis what the incoming DOJ should do on January 21—the day after Trump’s second inauguration.
“You expect that there’s going to be a pardon for the January 6th, uh, protesters?” Pirro asked Davis.
“I hope so. I hope that happens on January 20th and they get so much done on January 20th, at 12:01 p.m., that they take a break on January 21st.” Davis added that he hoped they pardoned “almost all the January 6th defendants . . . except for the people who were the most violent, including violent towards police.” Pirro agreed, saying “obviously.”
But Davis argued that “even those sentences should be commuted because nothing that happens on January 6th calls for a twenty-two-year prison sentence.” Davis did not name the January 6th defendant who received that sentence—but as noted above, it was Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys. Tarrio was the only convict sentenced to twenty-two years in prison—the longest sentence received in any January 6th case.
Davis continued: “January 6th was a lawful protest permitted by the National Park Service that devolved into a riot.”
“And when Democrats start caring about the much more deadly and destructive BLM riots, I’ll start caring about the January 6th riots,” Davis said. Pirro laughed at Davis’s whataboutism.
“Well and the whole idea, Mike Davis, that, you know, the person who died was Ashli Babbitt, uh, that the Capitol Police, as I understand, shot, and they will still not identify who shot her,” Pirro said. As explained above, Pirro’s claim was flat false—the Capitol Police officer who shot Babbitt was identified years earlier.
“Uh, when every day if an African American is shot by a police officer, uh, I mean you can’t wait to find out who that officer is, so you can make sure that he’s responsible criminally, if there is a crime, or civilly, or just held up to the disdain of everyone who knows him,” Pirro continued. “I mean it’s really sad what these people have done to America.”
Davis then claimed the “worst part” was how the Department of Justice had charged January 6th defendants. He criticized the DOJ’s use of the 1512 statute, claiming that the Supreme Court “essentially held” that the Biden Justice Department was “politically persecuting” these January 6th defendants, “weaponizing” a post-Enron obstruction of justice statute “intended to go after corporate fraud that Biden used to go after Trump and his political enemies.”
“There has to be accountability for this,” Davis continued. “There has to be internal probes at the Justice Department through the inspector general, the Office of Professional Responsibility, and a criminal probe through the U.S. attorney’s office. Heads need to roll.”
Pirro agreed with Davis’s assessment that DOJ prosecutors needed to be investigated. “Yeah, yeah, I absolutely agree with that and I think that most of America agrees with that because, you know what, the American people are good people, and not only were they fed up with this liberalism that literally, what, took America right to the edge of the cliff, but we’re fundamentally fair people and this idea of, you know, jailing people based upon their political beliefs, and that’s what it was, uh, should never ever be tolerated in this country,” Pirro responded.
Described the January 6th defendants as “hostages” and apparently criticized sentencing of Proud Boys leader.
During an interview with Sid Rosenberg on WABC on January 24, 2025, Pirro defended Trump’s January 6th pardons. Rosenberg said he had been asking his guests to grade Trump’s first week, and National Review’s Rich Lowry had given Trump only an A- because he didn’t like the president’s “sweeping pardons.” Rosenberg added that he thought Pirro would give Trump an A plus.
“A triple plus, squared, whatever, okay, he’s off the charts,” Pirro responded. “Let me tell you about the January 6th hostages, and I don’t want to get into this,” Pirro continued.
“Look, there is so much there, and that’s why they’re doing an investigation of the January 6th Committee. They destroyed the records, and everything that people started talking about—this guy gets twenty-two years, and he didn’t even show up to the place.”
Again: That “guy” is Enrique Tarrio, the Proud Boys leader who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and other charges, and then sentenced to twenty-two years in prison.
Unfit to serve as lead prosecutor in the nation’s capital
As the summary above makes clear, Jeanine Pirro is unfit to serve as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. That same office led the prosecution of violent extremists, including the Proud Boys, who led the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th.
“If Mr. Martin were being put forth as a U.S. attorney for any district except the district where January 6th happened, the protest happened, I’d probably support him, but not in this district,” Sen. Tillis said in May.
If he and other senators look at Jeanine Pirro’s record, they’ll see that they must likewise reject her nomination to serve as the top prosecutor in the same district.
Students of the American Revolution will know that two hundred forty-five years earlier, on New Year’s Eve 1775, George Washington was nowhere near the Delaware River. The event Pirro seems to have been describing along the Delaware was from Christmas 1776, not New Year’s Eve 1775.
It is a far-right myth that just 3 percent of the colonial population fought against the British.