Former Fox News pundit and current U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro is not exactly covering herself in glory as she enables the Trump administration’s takeover of the nation’s capital, and judges and juries are making sure she knows it.
Did you know that federal magistrate judges do not like it when one of Donald Trump’s alphabet soup of goons decides that they have probable cause to search someone for being Black and carrying a heavy backpack? Well, more to the point: Did Pirro know that federal magistrate judges do not like it when one of Trump’s alphabet soup of goons decides that they have probable cause to search someone for being Black and carrying a heavy backpack? Because she does now!
In dismissing charges Pirro’s office had brought against Torez Riley, who literally was searched for the crime of being Black and backpacked, U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said, “It is without a doubt the most illegal search I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m absolutely flabbergasted at what has happened. A high school student would know this was an illegal search.”
Pirro pushed for the charges against Riley, fighting with her own subordinates about a charge that typically would have been dropped because the search violated the Fourth Amendment. According to news reports, Pirro finally agreed to move to dismiss the charges last Friday after being shown body camera footage of Riley’s arrests. Cool cool cool that she pushed for the heightened charges before actually seeing what happened.
Related | Hey Jeanine Pirro—DC crime facts don’t care about your feelings
The magistrate judge somehow was not eternally grateful that Pirro decided after several days to drop an unlawful charge.
“We don’t just charge people criminally and then say, ‘Oops, my bad,’” Faruqui said. “I’m at a loss how the U.S. Attorney’s Office thought this was an appropriate charge in any court, let alone the federal court.”
Faruqui also said that judges have suppressed evidence from illegal searches in several other cases and that “Lawlessness cannot come from the government.”
Pirro, whose brain chemistry function seems limited to that of a constantly attacking betta fish, is predictably furious.
“This judge has a long history of bending over backwards to release dangerous felons in possession of firearms and on frequent occasions he has downplayed the seriousness of felons who possess illegal firearms and the danger they pose to our community,” she bleated.
Yes, Jeanine. We all know about how you insist that this illegal operation of yours is something everyone should be grateful for, but it’s nonsense.
Pirro’s not just doing the usual Trumpian bit about how any judge that rules against the administration is a secret communist plant or whatever. She’s also hitting some new talking points here. Magistrate judges in D.C. let people out while charges are pending in part because the District has cashless bail, a practice the Trump administration wants to ban.
The Riley case wasn’t Pirro’s only recent setback. On Monday, she was forced to drop a felony charge against Sydney Reid, who Pirro charged with a felony for attempting to impede the transfer of gang members by ICE. The “impeding” consisted of holding up her phone and then getting taken to the wall by multiple officers.
Pirro had 30 days to return a bill of indictment from a grand jury for a felony charge, which is what the law requires in the District. Thirty days, three tries, and … nope. So, Pirro’s office had to drop the felony charge—which, to be clear, should never have been a felony—and charge Reid with a misdemeanor instead.
The old adage about grand juries being willing to indict a ham sandwich is not really far off. It’s rare that prosecutors fail to secure an indictment on the first try, much less strike out.
It’s almost as if hiring a Fox News pundit most known for peddling election conspiracies to be the capital’s top enforcement attorney was a bad idea.