“To all my dear friends on The Five, I still hold you in my thoughts. However, I’m in Washington, truly committed to doing God’s work,” said with an unmistakable tone of nostalgia.
From the back seat of her car, Judge Jeanine Pirro recorded a heartfelt video message, extending her best wishes to her successor as Fox News announced Emily Compagno would be filling her former role on the beloved show.
This message also carried a pointed note for Washington.
At 75, the seasoned U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia has no plans of returning to the small screen, nor is she seeking new pastures anytime soon.
According to sources close to her shared with the Daily Mail, Pirro is committed for the long haul, acutely aware of the uphill battles after an eventful 15 months in her role, all while conscious of President Donald Trump’s watchful eye on her performance.
Trump has long admired Pirro’s toughness on camera and her appetite for taking on her critics. That friendship will not save her if she fails to deliver results.
‘The President certainly has fired his friends, but her fuse is longer than most,’ a former Trump administration official told the Daily Mail.
She was out in force at the Freedom 250 IndyCar race through the streets of Washington, DC, on Sunday, posing with a host of administration officials.
US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro is holding on to her position for now
Pirro attends the Indy 500 race in Washington, DC, with Lara Trump (right), Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham (left), and Monica Crowley at the weekend
Trump appointed her in part to see the daily law-and-order toughness she performed on Fox News put into practice in Washington.
‘There are expectations of her that are higher than most people,’ one source familiar with their relationship told the Daily Mail.
The first real strike against her came over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Prosecutors in her office moved to dismiss the vandalism charges against ex-Olympian David Hearn. But Pirro did not tell the President first, another source said, and Trump was reportedly enraged by a fold he found wildly out of character for a prosecutor who built her career on never backing down.
Trump said at the time Pirro was ‘totally wrong,’ and said, ‘I told her I was not happy.’ But he didn’t engage with a reporter when asked if she would be fired.
After the public scolding, he appeared to move on following a frank discussion with Pirro at the White House.
During the closed-door Oval Office meeting, she personally detailed the Reflecting Pool case evidence to him. The President was angry but understanding, a source familiar with the meeting previously told the Daily Mail.
‘The reason Trump went ballistic is that he didn’t know about it. It didn’t get by him,’ another Washington insider told the Daily Mail after the Oval Office showdown.
Weeks later, another source said Trump has cooled off.
‘I don’t think that she’s on thin ice now, I just think Trump was p***ed off about the case,’ another source told the Daily Mail. ‘It was kind of a dumb case. It wasn’t going to go anywhere and she was fully honest with the President about it.’
The bigger problem now is that her office has struggled to land seemingly airtight cases, with Washington’s jury pool deeply skeptical of the administration’s prosecutions, say sources.
Juries have twice deadlocked over two suspected MS-13 ringleaders, sending both trials to mistrials this week.
Trump was livid when he learned that Pirro’s office was dropping charges against people arrested for vandalizing the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall
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The deadlocked juries are a sign that there is deep skepticism surrounding Pirro and the Trump administration among DC citizens.
Those defeats will likely continue, sources tell the Daily Mail, despite her willingness to take cases to trial.
‘Jury nullification is a serious problem in DC,’ a legal source following proceedings in the city said.
Jury nullification is when jurors deliver a not guilty verdict even though they believe the defendant has broken the law.
Pirro is also up against unprecedented internal resistance from what other sources described as ‘unruly’ career prosecutors inside the US Attorney’s Office.
‘She’s got her hands full over there,’ one source told the Daily Mail.
Her predecessor, interim US Attorney Ed Martin, went to war with the office’s more liberal prosecutors and never got confirmed in the job.
Trump with Pirro at Mar-a-Lago, where they used to be seen together regularly
Pirro has taken the opposite approach and kept working with them.
‘If she wants to have any credibility in front of these judges, she’s got to work with the professionals in the office,’ a source said.
Her detractors point to the low conviction rate as proof she is not delivering. Her office measures success differently.
‘US Attorney Jeanine Pirro is prosecuting cases with one clear goal: Making Washington, DC safer for everyone,’ a spokesman told the Daily Mail.
‘Under the previous administration, 67 percent of arrests were simply not prosecuted. Under Pirro, just 5 percent go unprosecuted. The message is clear: Criminals can’t escape accountability.’
The White House did not return a request for comment.
Pirro’s office has also chalked up a win with the successful prosecution and sentencing of a would-be assassin who targeted Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Pirro continues struggling to conclude successful cases in Washington, DC
She also has a good relationship with newly sworn-in Attorney General Todd Blanche, sources close to him told the Daily Mail, and her allies were grateful when he backed her publicly on NBC’s Meet the Press.
‘I absolutely support US Attorney Pirro, as does President Trump,’ Blanche said, adding that she was doing ‘a phenomenal job.’
For now she is probably safe, one source said, because Trump has no appetite for another bruising confirmation fight over a successor.
‘The question is, what’s the alternative?’ the source said.
She will not walk away either, sources told the Daily Mail, citing her determination to finish what she started. And there is no queue forming behind her.
‘Who is going to want that f***ing job? It’s the worst one in the DOJ,’ one source close to the White House said.