U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro's plan to scuttle a damaging ruling backfired when a federal judge smacked her down for a second time.
Pirro — the former Fox News host tapped by President Donald Trump as Washington's top federal prosecutor — had asked Chief Judge James Boasberg to wipe his own ruling from the record, arguing the case was moot. Yesterday, Boasberg said no — and took the opportunity to pile on.
The original March ruling had gutted Pirro's criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, finding she had "no good-faith basis to believe that Powell was guilty of any crime other than displeasing the President."
"'The judicial version of the Streisand effect,'" Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff wrote on X, referring to the phenomenon where trying to bury something only draws more attention to it. Boasberg, Parloff noted, found that Pirro had "harass[ed]" Powell for nothing more than "displeasing" Trump.
After losing in March, Pirro vowed to appeal — then didn't. She closed the investigation entirely on April 24, then asked the court to erase the ruling on the grounds that it could no longer be challenged.
"'[T]he Government chose to create the mootness of which it now complains,'" Boasberg fired back, meaning Pirro killed her own case and then complained she couldn't appeal it. He found the equities weighed "overwhelmingly against" erasing his prior opinion.
