What To Know
- CNN’s Paula Reid speculates that Jeanine Pirro is positioning herself to replace Pam Bondi as U.S. attorney general.
- Reid suggests Pirro’s defiant stance aligns with President Trump’s desire for aggressive prosecutors.
- Despite speculation about Bondi’s job security, the White House maintains public support for her.
Jeanine Pirro has gone from district judge to TV judge to Fox News host to U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Could U.S. attorney general be the next addition to her résumé? Paula Reid, CNN’s chief legal affairs correspondent, thinks so.
Reid offered the speculation on Friday after Pirro gave an impassioned press conference following U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s ruling to block a grand jury’s subpoenas to the Federal Reserve in an investigation of Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell.
Afterward, on CNN, Reid said that current Attorney General Pam Bondi “is on thin ice with the White House and with [President Donald Trump]” and that Pirro wants her job, per Mediaite.
“[The press conference] appeared to be an audition for the top job at the Justice Department, because we know that President Trump is very frustrated,” Reid said. “He has expressed frustration with prosecutors at the Justice Department that they have not been able to successfully prosecute his political adversaries.”
Reid added: “Here, you saw [Pirro] come out defiant, scolding reporters for asking some very reasonable questions. And that is the kind of prosecutor that President Trump wants to see in his Justice Department.”
However, Reid noted Trump-backed prosecutors have “overall … not been successful,” calling out failed cases against former FBI head James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“It’s unlikely this will be successful either,” Reid said. “But there she’s showing the boss she’s at least trying.”
Pirro said she wanted to investigate the multibillion-dollar renovation of the Federal Reserve’s D.C. headquarters and Powell’s testimony about the renovation before the Senate Banking Committee, but Boasberg wasn’t convinced.
“Did prosecutors issue those subpoenas for a proper purpose? The Court finds that they did not,” the judge wrote in a decision dated on Wednesday and unsealed on Friday, March 13 per CNBC. “There is abundant evidence that the subpoenas’ 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.”
At her press conference on Friday, Pirro called the decision outrageous. “Jerome Powell today is now bathed in immunity, preventing my office from investigating the Federal Reserve,” she said. “This is wrong, and it is without legal authority.”
As for Bondi, Politico reported on March 6 that many Congressional Republicans have turned against the attorney general for her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. The outlet also noted that Trump has a tendency to fire Cabinet members who lose the faith of Republican lawmakers.
But White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told Politico that Bondi “has worked tirelessly to successfully implement the President’s law and order agenda and that Trump “has full faith in the Attorney General.”
