IMDB

Actor

1951-06-02 · Elmira, New York, US · Female

4 series in the catalog

Jeanine Ferris Pirro (born June 2, 1951) is an American television host, lawyer, and author who has been serving as the United States attorney for the District of Columbia since May 2025. Pirro is a former judge, prosecutor, and politician in the state of New York.

Pirro was elected as a judge of the Westchester County (New York) Court in 1990. In 1993, she was elected to the position of Westchester County district attorney. She is the first woman to be elected to either of those positions. As district attorney, she gained visibility in cases of domestic abuse and crimes against the elderly. Pirro was re-elected district attorney in 1997 and 2001. She briefly sought the Republican nomination for United States Senate to run against Hillary Clinton in 2006, but dropped out to run as the Republican candidate for New York Attorney General; she lost the general election to Democrat Andrew Cuomo.

From 2008 to 2011, Pirro hosted a weekday television show entitled Judge Jeanine Pirro on The CW. From 2011 to 2022, she hosted Justice with Judge Jeanine on Fox News Channel. She has authored seven books, including Liars, Leakers, and Liberals: The Case Against the Anti-Trump Conspiracy (2018). Following the 2020 presidential election, Pirro made false claims of voting machine fraud. In 2022, she became a co-host of The Five, a position she held until May 2025. She was also a frequent contributor to NBC News, including regular appearances on The Today Show.

Pirro was named as a defendant in a February 2021 defamation lawsuit by Smartmatic. She was among the Fox News hosts named in the Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network defamation lawsuit for broadcasting false statements about the plaintiff company's voting machines. Fox News settled the case for $787.5 million and was required to acknowledge that the broadcast statements were false.

On May 8, 2025, President Trump named her as the interim United States attorney for the District of Columbia to succeed Ed Martin. She was sworn in on May 28, and confirmed to the full position on August 2, 2025.

Early life

Jeanine Ferris was born and raised in Elmira, New York, the daughter of Lebanese-American parents. Both her parents were born in Bsalim in Lebanon before emigrating to the United States. Her father was a mobile-home salesman, and her mother was a department-store model in New York City who spent much of her childhood in Beirut. Her parents were Maronite Catholics. Pirro knew she wanted to be an attorney from the age of six.

She graduated from Notre Dame High School in Elmira in three years, interning in the Chemung County District Attorney's office during her time in high school. Pirro then graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University at Buffalo. She received her Juris Doctor degree from Albany Law School in 1975, where she had been an editor of the Albany Law Review.

Assistant District Attorney

In 1975, District Attorney Carl Vergari appointed Pirro to the position of Assistant District Attorney of Westchester County in New York State, where she began her career by writing appeals and handling minor cases. In 1977, Pirro approached Vergari and requested that he apply for a federal grant for local district attorney's offices to establish bureaus that specialized in domestic violence. She hoped that Vergari would take advantage of potential funding, as well as a 1977 change in New York law that moved many domestic violence cases from family court to criminal court. Vergari agreed to apply for the grant, and his office became one of four in the nation to win the grant. In 1978, he appointed Pirro to be the first chief of the new Domestic Violence and Child Abuse Bureau. Pirro was known to be an aggressive bureau chief. Due to possible coercion, she had a strict policy against dropping cases at a victim's request.

On June 1, 1990, just five months prior to Pirro's first appearance on the ballot for County Court Judge, she attracted widespread attention for rushing to conduct a bedside investigation of Maria Amaya at the Intensive Care Unit of United Hospital in Port Chester. Amaya had been charged with four counts of second-degree murder for the deaths of her four children. She was a 36-year-old immigrant from El Salvador who had a history of being hospitalized for mental issues. Amaya had killed the four children and attempted suicide, believing that they were being corrupted by drugs and sex.

While recognized for her prosecution of domestic violence, Pirro was criticized for her relative prosecutorial absence in bringing charges involving major public corruption or organized crime. These criticisms intensified when Pirro's husband was later convicted of several felonies tied to organized crime, including tax evasion and conspiracy. "One would have to believe that there's no organized crime in Westchester County, not a single corrupt official, and every union in this county is as clean as the driven snow," according to William I. Aronwald, who headed the Federal Organized Crime Strike Force during the 1970s.

During an abortive 1986 campaign for Lieutenant Governor of New York, Pirro boasted to have never lost a case in "about 50 trials." This number was disputed when presented in 2005 to colleagues, who said that the real number of trials personally handled by Pirro "wasn't more than 10." Pirro's then-spokesman, Anne Marie Corbalis, contended only that Pirro had a "100% felony conviction rate" as an Assistant District Attorney.

County court judge

Pirro left the District Attorney's office after her November 1990 election as a judge of the Westchester County Court. She had successfully run on the Republican and Conservative party lines against Democratic nominee and New Castle Town Justice Lawrence D. Lenihan and Right to Life Party nominee August C. Nimphius, Jr. Pirro is the first woman to serve as a judge of the Westchester County Court.

District Attorney

In November 1993, Pirro was elected Westchester County District Attorney; she is the first woman to hold that position. She was re-elected in 1997 and 2001. On May 23, 2005, Pirro announced that she would not seek re-election to a fourth term as Westchester County District Attorney.

On December 31, 1993—within hours of Pirro's midnight inauguration as District Attorney—Scripps newspaper heiress Anne Scripps Douglas was savagely bludgeoned in the head with a hammer by her estranged husband, Scott Douglas, as she slept in their Bronxville, New York, home. By the time police arrived, Scott Douglas had fled the scene. Anne Scripps Douglas died in the hospital on January 6. Scott Douglas subsequently committed suicide by jumping off the Tappan Zee Bridge. Pirro, already known as a passionate prosecutor of domestic violence cases, was a frequent presence in the media during the period between the murder and when Scott Douglas's body washed ashore in Riverdale in early March 1994. This increase in Pirro's national profile led to her surfacing as a frequent contributor on network and cable television news in June 1994, when O.J. Simpson was arrested for the murder of his ex-wife, appearing frequently as an analyst on Nightline, Larry King Live, and Geraldo.

Within months of taking office, Pirro undertook a costly renovation to the district attorney's facilities and expanded to an additional floor of the county courthouse. The largest expenses were a new kitchenette and a media room, costing $20,000, to assist Pirro's growing profile; additional expenditures were made to remodel her personal office with mahogany.

Pirro was the first female president of the New York State District Attorneys Association. Also while district attorney, she was appointed by then-Governor George Pataki to chair the New York State Commission on Domestic Violence Fatalities. Its report and recommendations resulted in legislation passing that enhanced protections of, and safeguards for, the victims of domestic abuse.

During her tenure as district attorney…