The US Senate has confirmed Jeanine Pirro – a former Fox News host and staunch Donald Trump ally who boosted lies that he lost the 2020 presidential race because of electoral fraudsters – as the top federal prosecutor for the nation’s capital.
Pirro – a former New York state district attorney and county judge who joined Fox News in 2011 – was confirmed on Saturday in a 50-45 vote along party lines.
In a statement issued by Pirro after the vote, the Republican said she was “blessed” to have been confirmed as the US attorney for Washington DC. “Get ready for a real crime fighter,” said Pirro’s statement, which called the US attorney’s office she had been confirmed to lead the largest in the country.
Before her media career, Pirro spent over a decade as a Republican district attorney in Westchester county, New York, and also served as a county judge.
She hosted her own Fox show Justice with Judge Jeanine. And more recently, she became a co-host on the Fox show The Five.
Pirro used her time at Fox News in part to publicly support the baseless claims that Trump lost his first presidency to Joe Biden in 2020 because of voter fraud. In 2021, she was among several Fox News hosts named in the defamation lawsuit against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems, which accused the network of knowingly airing false claims about the company’s voting machines after the previous year’s election.
Fox ultimately settled the lawsuit for $787.5m and has acknowledged that the fraud claims were false.
Pirro has been serving as the interim US attorney since May, when her fellow Republican Trump nominated her to the post months into his second presidency. She was nominated after Trump withdrew the nomination of conservative activist Ed Martin, his first choice for the role. A key Republican senator, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, had said he would not support Martin’s nomination.
Related: Irate Trump tells Schumer to ‘go to hell’ after Senate standoff over confirmations
In announcing Pirro’s nomination in May, Trump praised her record, and said that she was a “powerful crusader for victims of crime” and someone who “excelled in all ways”.
“Jeanine is incredibly well qualified for this position,” the president added.
The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, on Saturday published a statement exalting Pirro as “a warrior for law and order”.
At the end of his first presidency, Trump pardoned Pirro’s former husband, Albert Pirro Jr, after he had been convicted in 2000 on federal charges of fraud and tax evasion.
Pirro is one of a number of Trump loyalists with ties to Fox who have joined the president’s administration. Other prominent ones include her fellow ex-Fox News host Pete Hegseth, the embattled defense secretary, and the former Fox Business personality Sean Duffy, the embattled transportation secretary.
In June, US senator Adam Schiff accused Pirro of “blind obedience to Donald Trump is nearly unrivaled among his ardent supporters”.
“For an important prosecutorial position like this one, the country has a right to demand a serious and principled public servant,” Schiff said. “Jeanine Pirro is not it.”
Despite Pirro’s confirmation, the US Senate left Washington DC on Saturday night for its monthlong August recess without a deal to advance dozens of Trump nominees despite days of contentious, bipartisan negotiations.
An irate Trump went on social media and told Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer to “GO TO HELL!”
