Jeanine Pirro

Jeanine Ferris Pirro (born June 2, 1951) is an American television host and author, and is also a former judge, prosecutor, and politician in the state of New York.

"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.

She received her J.D. degree at Albany Law School of Union University in 1975, where she was an editor of the law review.

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 multiple occasions, Vergari spoke to Pirro concerning her violation of office policy.

She had issued press releases with her own name—and not Vergari's—on top.

The relationship between Pirro and Vergari disintegrated in the late 1980s, after Pirro claimed sole responsibility for the establishment of the Domestic Violence and Child Abuse Bureau.

Pirro was elected as a judge of the Westchester County (N.Y.) Court in 1990.

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.

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, Pirro gained visibility in cases of domestic abuse and crimes against the elderly.

Pirro was re-elected district attorney in 1997 and 2001.

Pirro briefly sought the Republican nomination for United States Senate to run against Hillary Clinton in 2006, but dropped out to accept the nomination 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.

From 2011 to 2022, she hosted Justice with Judge Jeanine on Fox News Channel.

Pirro has authored six 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, Pirro became a co-host of The Five.

She has been 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 in relation to false claims of election fraud in the 2020 United States presidential election.

While the allegation against Pirro was dismissed in March 2022, the lawsuit against the other Fox News hosts and the company was in the discovery phase as of April 2023.

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

Jeanine Ferris was born and raised in Elmira, New York, the daughter of Lebanese-American parents.

Her father was a mobile-home salesman, and her mother was a department-store model 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.