CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams didn’t hold back Thursday night as he delivered a scathing assessment of President Donald Trump’s pick of Fox News host Jeanine Pirro as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
Williams, himself a former federal prosecutor, slammed past comments Pirro made while amplifying false claims about the 2020 election on her Fox News show. He also reminded viewers that Pirro was cited in Dominion’s defamation lawsuit against the network.
“They were at best twisting the truth and, at worst, outright lies,” Williams told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Thursday. “This is the biggest U.S. Attorney’s Office in the country,” he said, which employs "hundreds of people."
He added: “How do you build faith among the people who work in the office when your record as a leader is disgraceful and, quite frankly, an affront to the office?"
ALSO READ: Trump is a troll – but his 'ugly' pope selfie demands a damning response
Pirro, a former county judge and assistant district attorney, held her last law enforcement job in 2005 and has spent the last two decades in right-wing media, Williams said. While she once held elected office and has prosecutorial credentials, the CNN analyst noted: “That’s it.”
“Since then, she’s demonstrated a willingness to step out for the president of the United States in a role that really ought to be independent of the White House,” he said. “So it’s sort of more of the same.”
But there was a bright side to Pirro’s elevation to the high-profile Department of Justice role.
“The pick before her was so terrible, she seems quite reasonable,” Williams concluded about the collapse of Trump’s failed nomination of Ed Martin.
