Trump eyes Fox News host for key DOJ role

President Donald Trump is considering Fox News commentator and former New York judge and prosecutor Jeanine Pirro to serve as interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, ABC News reported on Thursday.

"An announcement about a new interim U.S. attorney could come as soon as today, sources said. Sources caution that plans could always change and a decision is never final until publicly announced by the president," said the report. "The White House did not immediately respond to request for comment from ABC News. A representative for Fox News press relations did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for comment, nor did Pirro."

This follows reports that Trump is ready to pull the plug on his controversial prior nominee for the role, current acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin.

A far-right legal activist with no prosecutorial experience prior to being installed in the role, Martin stirred up a series of controversies, from ethics complaints about his involvement in dismissing cases he previously defended, to sending intimidation letters to a number of organizations Trump was annoyed with, to his public praise for a Nazi-sympathizing January 6 rioter who dressed up as Hitler. Trump sought to appoint him on a permanent basis, but Senate Republicans signaled they would not give him the votes.

Pirro, while she does have prosecutorial experience, is likely to stir up controversies of her own.

She is a longtime right-wing commentator who has backed Trump since 2016, accused former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden of a "bloodless coup," and pushed 2020 election conspiracy theories so enthusiastically that Fox News staffers privately panicked about her as a legal liability. More recently, she has defended the right of the Trump administration to summarily arrest and expel migrants with no due process.

Immediately, the report Pirro could be tapped as top federal prosecutor in D.C. stirred reactions.

"An outside the box choice," wrote MSNBC commentator Sam Stein. "Not at all a surprise," wrote former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL), a longtime critic of Trump and his former party.