Date: 2025-08-24 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00029045
TRUMP ACOLYTIES
JEANINE PIRRO
Jeanine Pirro bragged about helping Trump and GOP while a Fox News host
JEANINE PIRRO
Jeanine Pirro bragged about helping Trump and GOP while a Fox News host
Original article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/08/19/jeanine-pirro-trump-republicans-fox/
The former Fox host complained of “CENSORSHIP” by Fox over her coverage of the 2020 election, according to newly unredacted documents in the Smartmatic defamation case.
August 19, 2025 at 8:21 p.m. EDT
Written by Jeremy Barr
Jeanine Pirro, then a weekend host on Fox News, told the chairman of the Republican National Committee in a September 2020 text message that she was determined to aid President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, despite the network prohibiting on-air personalities from political involvement.
“I work so hard for the party across the country,” Pirro, now the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, told Ronna McDaniel in the message, according to newly unredacted court documents made public Tuesday in filings by the voting technology company Smartmatic, which in 2021 filed a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox over its 2020 election coverage. “I’m the Number 1 watched show on all news cable all weekend. I work so hard for the President and party.”
Smartmatic compiled previously unreported text messages and emails between Fox employees, along with comments made in sworn depositions, in an effort to persuade the judge in the long-running case to rule in its favor. Smartmatic’s motion was originally filed in late April, but a judicial hearing officer decided only recently that many of the redactions obscuring parts of the original filings should be removed.
Smartmatic is arguing that hosts and executives at Fox knew claims that the voting technology company had rigged the election in Joe Biden’s favor were false, but allowed them to air to maintain the network’s support with pro-Trump viewers.
Fox News, which filed its own motion for summary judgment, has denied that it defamed Smartmatic and said its hosts were merely covering, without endorsing, newsworthy claims of election fraud made by the president’s associates.
Smartmatic included many of the conversations in 468 pages of filings to bolster its contention that Pirro and other Fox hosts were determined to stay on Trump’s good side for a variety of motives. It said Pirro, a longtime friend of the president, sought to secure a pardon for her ex-husband, Albert Pirro. Convicted earlier of tax evasion and conspiracy, Albert Pirro was the last person Trump pardoned during his first term.
The pardon was not assured, according to the filing, which chronicles the Fox News host’s fury when her ex-husband was initially not included on Trump’s list for clemency. She expressed her “upset” about that to the president’s son, Eric Trump, and lashed out at the girlfriend of Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who received a pardon from Trump. Pirro called Kerik a “selfish bastard,” and wrote in a text message, “I DON’T CARE [ABOUT] ANYONE ELSE.”
According to another previously unpublished message included in the filing, Pirro referred to Fox News host Sean Hannity as an “egomaniac.” Recalling an Oval Office meeting with Trump, Pirro wrote in an Oct. 27, 2020, text message to a friend that Hannity “[stormed] in like he owns the place, throws his papers on the Pres desk and says, you don’t mind if I use your private bathroom, and walks into bathroom within Oval and uses it. Looks at me and says, I got to talk to him … It’s all abt him, period. No one else matters.”
Smartmatic argues in the suit that Pirro served as a conduit to Trump associates who said the election was stolen, including the lawyer Sidney Powell.
“It’s Jeanine P. Got a former CIA chief of station who knows [about] development of Dominion,” she wrote in a Nov. 10, 2020, text message to Powell, referring to another voting technology company that some Fox hosts said was involved in a voting fraud scheme. “Keep fighting,” Pirro told Powell. Fox settled a similar defamation case brought by Dominion for $787.5 million in 2023.
Pirro’s producer, Jerry Andrews, warned her directly to stay away from claims of election fraud as concerns spread internally about their veracity. “You should be very careful with this stuff and protect yourself given the ongoing calls for evidence that has not materialized,” he said.
The Nov. 7, 2020, edition of her show, “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” did not air, infuriating Pirro.
In a text message exchange with Hannity three days later, Pirro wrote: “I’M TIRED OF THE CENSORSHIP AND I’M EMBARRASSED BY HOW THEY CALLED THIS ELECTION.”
Pirro told Hannity that she made several demands of Fox management after the Nov. 7 show didn’t run as scheduled, leading to speculation that she was suspended from the network.
Hannity noted that Fox was heavily promoting Pirro on the air, speculating that the network was trying to get back in her good graces. “Fox News promoting u every 5 seconds. It’s hilarious,” Hannity wrote.
But despite some internal concerns about Pirro’s commentary about the election, Fox News C.E.O. Suzanne Scott told a network executive “we don’t want to censor” her show, according to the filing.
Still, according to Smartmatic, Pirro acknowledged in a deposition that the 2020 election was not stolen. She agreed that the election was “fair and free” and that Smartmatic, which provided election technology to Los Angeles County, did nothing wrong. “I believe that there’s been no showing that Smartmatic engaged in any problems,” she said, according to filing, which also cited her as answering “I do” when asked by Smartmatic’s lawyers whether she believed Biden was “legitimately elected.” (An email sent to a press account for Pirro’s office seeking comment was not returned.)
Fox never corrected its coverage of Smartmatic or acknowledged particular mistakes, Smartmatic noted.
“The evidence shows that Smartmatic’s business and reputation were badly suffering long before any claims by President Trump’s lawyers on Fox News and that Smartmatic grossly inflated its damage claims to generate headlines and chill free speech,” Fox News said in a statement Tuesday. “Now, in the aftermath of Smartmatic’s executives getting indicted for bribery charges, we are eager and ready to continue defending our press freedoms.”
The filing also includes newly public comments made by other Fox hosts, including Jesse Watters and Maria Bartiromo.
In a deposition included in Smartmatic’s court filing, Bartiromo said “no” when asked whether Fox owes Smartmatic an apology for its coverage. “I think Fox did an excellent job of reporting on what was going on at the time,” she said. “I am certainly very proud of my work.”
In a December 2020 message with Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, Watters nodded to the potential upside of aligning with those saying the election was stolen. “Think about how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL,” the Smartmatic document cited him saying. But he testified in a deposition that he saw “no evidence that Smartmatic Technology switched votes in the 2020 Election in the United States.”
In a message sent via the messaging app Signal and cited in the document, Bartiromo told Powell, “Sidney we must keep you out there.” Referring to then-Fox host Lou Dobbs, she added, “Dobbs is considered very opinionated. I am news.” She then told Powell, “I am very worried … Please please overturn this. Bring the evidence. I know you can.” (Bartiromo also told Rudy Giuliani, who was part of Trump’s legal team, “I want you to overturn this.”)
Fox News anchor Bret Baier, according to the filing, notified Fox News executive Jay Wallace that Bartiromo was making false claims about the election. “None of that is true as far as we can tell,” he wrote. “We need to fact-check this crap.”
The filing, like the motions made by Dominion in 2023, showed that many Fox hosts were concerned about audience backlash after Fox was the first network to call the state of Arizona for Joe Biden on election night 2020. “There’s an audience uprising vs. Fox like I’ve never seen,” Watters said in a text message to a producer.
Watters’ producer, Megan Albano, told him the day after the 2020 election that if Fox called the election for Biden, “you cannot, under any circumstances, cast doubt” on it because “the powers that be are not having any of it.”
The same day, Watters texted Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who now serves as defense secretary: “By the way, did you get the memo about not saying fraud?”
Despite expressing concerns at the time about the accuracy of the fraud claims being made by Trump associates, Fox executives said in later depositions that the claims were worthy of coverage, echoing the broader legal argument that company lawyers have made in defending against Smartmatic’s lawsuit.
“I believed Biden won fairly,” Scott said, according to the filing, “but I also believed Trump was making these allegations and we would let that play out.”
Hannity similarly defended a decision to air an interview with Giuliani, despite concerns about his credibility. “We had obvious concerns that we had discussed, but that being [the] top newsmaker of the day, we made the — I believe the right editorial decision to put him on,” Hannity said in a sworn deposition.
Despite his own concerns about the election claims, and belief they were false, Fox News co-founder Rupert Murdoch said it was the “correct” decision to host those making the claims because it was “newsworthy.”
The judge in the case, New York Supreme Court Judge David B. Cohen, is likely to issue his ruling on both parties’ motions for summary judgment in the coming months. A trial could begin sometime in 2026.
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
These days, I find myself seeing 'fault' in almost everything I look at. I am sure that some of that is simply the 'crankyness' of old age, but a lot of it is still a massive degradation of almost everything there is in the modern world.
Yesterday I watched an old TV presentation on PBS about the My-Lai massacre in the Vietnam War. It has had me thinking about 'change' during my lifetime ... and how so much of modernity is still bad, perhaps even more than it was in the past.
Recently, I have watched a lot of 'Quora' on my computer. I have no idea how Quora curates the information that I get to see but what I am seeing does not fill me with much optimism. The questions getting asked suggest a level of ignorance that is 'off the charts' especially from Americans. The good news is some of the responses are very good ... or maybe just that I agree with them!
Ar times like this I am reminded of some discussin in the UK in the Victorian era. Prime Minister Disraeli wanted to expand the voting franchise to all adult mailes. Former Prime Minister Gladstone wanted to limit the voting franchise to the educated property owning class, arguing that it was important to have a good understanding of the issues of the day. Later Prime Minister Churchlll argued that a universal franchise was not good, but was better than everythong else!
From my perspective modern politics is not working very well, especially in the United States. The idea that someone like Trimp could be elected to anything is offensive, and that he has been elected US President twice, not just once is 'off the charts' stupid!
It is now a very real question whether or not the United States can maintain a world leadership position with Trump and the Trump administration running the country. At this time ... August 2025 ... about 6 months into the 2nd Trump administration, I see all sorts of signs that a majority of world leaders are not going to tolerate Trump and America in the future in the way they have done in the past. I hope I am wrong ... but I expect that by this winter, the US economy will be in serious trouble with bad impacts for most of the US population. Worse, however, is that economic recovery is likely to be very very slow. or maybe 'not at all!'
Trump's administration shows no signs that it will be able to handle this fragile future!
I see Trump as a 'very present danger!'
Peter Burgess