Why would Fox News send Pirro to the trial if not to provide a platform for her to say what Trump can’t?

Despite having been a prosecutor and a judge who made a name for herself as an advocate for abused women, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro has a long record of dubious, at best, behavior. I’ve documented the details many times but they are worth going over again. From NewsHounds’ May, 2018 post:

[Jeanine Pirro] was married for 32 years to a lawyer with alleged mob ties, who went to jail for tax fraud and who fathered an illegitimate daughter. She also came under federal investigation for allegedly planning to bug her husband’s boat [with Bernie Kerik, previously pardoned by Trump) to see if [he] was cheating on her. It just so happens that same (now former) husband was kept on retainer by Trump. It’s not clear if that ended after the jail sentence.

In January 2021, Pirro successfully lobbied her (presumably) favorite p***y grabber to pardon her ex-husband, though it’s not clear what, if anything he did to deserve it. Currently, Pirro is also a defendant in the $2.7 billion Smartmatic lawsuit against Fox News for having attacked our democracy with lies about the 2020 presidential election.

So, it’s no surprise that “Judge” Pirro was willing to do Trump’s dirty work for him. Sadly, the same is true for the Fox Propaganda Network that sponsored this latest attack on the rule of law.

As The New York Times reported, Trump saw Pirro in the courtroom as he was leaving and whispered, “Come.”

Former prosecutor and editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch.com Ron Filipkowski asked whether Trump then asked Pirro to attack the trial in ways the gag order bars him: “Several hours later, Trump directed his followers on Truth Social to tune in to specifically watch Jeanine Pirro on Sean Hannity's show. He didn't promote any other show to watch tonight. He didn't promote any other guest on Hannity's show,” Filipkowski reported.

Filipkowski went on to provide excerpts from Pirro’s Hannity appearance in which she “viciously and disgustingly” attacked Stormy Daniels in way that sounded “almost word for word” like Trump. She also“committed what would be gag order violations by attacking Michael Cohen and talking about the jury. She even said that a federal judge found that he was a ‘serial liar’ which would be an especially egregious violation that would likely put Trump in jail if he said it.”

We don’t know if Trump put Pirro up to this stunt, which would be his own gag order violation, Filipkowski pointed out, but we do know that Fox allowed her to do it. Given that Hannity has admitted to having a side hustle as a Trump adviser, it seems almost certain that the plan was in place before Pirro went on the Hannity show, quite likely before she got to the courtroom.

In any event, Pirro’s prime time attacks on the rule of law were a repeat performance. Before she went on Hannity, she used her cohosting gig on The Five as a warm-up act:

PIRRO: All right, the judge does not want to gag Michael Cohen. He refuses to because he's part of this whole conspiracy to convict Trump.

The truth is if you're going to gag Donald Trump, but you don't have a right to do in this case, you've got to gag Michael Cohen, everybody knows that the ordinary American out there knows it.

But when he turned into such a wuss, he said [to prosecutors], "Can you tell him that I -- that I'm asking you to tell him?" Why, are you stupid? Do you not know you're a judge?

Pirro’s comments are hateful but the gag order allows Trump to attack the judge and the district attorney. However, attacking witnesses is not allowed, Filipkowski pointed out. Pirro smeared both Daniels and Cohen on The Five.

PIRRO: We have been watching for days a nut job [Daniels] who speaks to dead people, who think she lives in a haunted house, who wants to take up reading tarot cards, who wants to Make America Horny Again and you want to make this woman a main witness when she's prejudicial per se? All lawyers know what I mean by that.

Now we're getting a serial liar, as a federal judge called him, a serial perjurer, a whole case about whether or not payments were made to reimburse this serial liar for what? Nobody can tell us what they're for.

There to help out with doing Trump’s dirty work for him was the charismatically challenged, conspiracy-theorist “Kennedy,” a cohost that day. She added a disgusting smear of Daniels:

KENNEDY: Judge Jeanine is absolutely fired up. And it just goes to show you how politically charged and emotionally charged this case is.

And if this were such a big deal, why are we trying it eight years later? And you know, it made me wonder, if that's the case, are Alvin Bragg and you know, Matthew Colgardner, whatever.

PIRRO: Colangelo.

KENNEDY: Coleangelo, are they going to collude in eight years to put Hunter Biden on the stand? I think we have about as much chance of seeing that as we do Miss Daniels regrowing her cherry and putting it in her Shirley Temple.

JESSE WATTERS (COHOST): Oh, wow. I'm thirsty all of a sudden.

Cohost Harold Ford Jr., supposedly there to provide a Democratic perspective, did not object to such misogynistic and crude smears, nor the fact that his colleagues were obviously violating the gag order so Trump didn’t have to. He merely said, “This is Friday” in “protest.”

Civil-war advocate Greg Gutfeld added his own attack on the rule of law by attacking the trial as “an attempt – to use their phrase, ‘steal democracy.'” He added, “And they're trying to camouflage their lack of real substance with a -- with a porn star sex chat that the media gobbles up like cheap Ritalin. It is ironic that -- it must be ironic to Stormy, you know, that Trump's facing all these gag orders, given that was always part of her job description.”

Now Ford did his part to help Trump. Speaking to Pirro, he said: “I think the country, if you look at some of the polling, that Mr. Trump is winning in the trial. Put aside the things that you were talking about,  the substance of it, because I -- whether you think he should be charged or not be charged, whether the case should have been brought or not ... Did you think that Mr. Trump had a good day legally, if you were just trying to assess this from a legal standpoint?”

As if Ford didn’t know he was just giving Pirro another opportunity to attack the trial. Sure enough, she said, “I think he had a good day legally today and yesterday when I was there. The issue is whether or not the jury -- see, I think he had a good day legally. Because I know it's not probative. It's not relevant." But she added that she doesn’t think the jury knows why they’re there “other than to be told Donald Trump's a bad guy, and that's what worries me.”

“That was my thinking,” Ford agreed. “A couple of observations. First, President Trump is a fighter. Everyone knows that. And I think he resists any efforts to restrict himself, whether it be in business, politics, and he certainly is demonstrating that in the court.”

Ford finally got around to sort of voicing another point of view, sort of - by saying his “objection” is to Trump’s behavior in court. “But the real issue and the real issue for the prosecution is Mr. Cohen,” Ford concluded. He predicted Cohen’s testimony next week will be “the most dispositive for this case.”

This is what passes for Democratic commentary on Fox News.

You can watch Pirro do her warm up act below, from the May 10, 2024 The Five.