Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, reportedly refused to answer when asked if she would prosecute President Donald Trump if he shot somebody.
The exchange was detailed in a recent New York Magazine profile by the magazine’s Washington, D.C. correspondent Ben Terris, who spoke to Pirro while her spokesperson, Tim Lauer, was also present.
”If Donald Trump were to shoot someone in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue, would you prosecute him?” Terris asked.
The question referenced Trump’s infamous 2016 claim that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and still would not lose voters.
Pirro ultimately declined to answer Terris’ question after a back-and-forth with her spokesperson, according to the report.
“I’ll use Donald Trump’s own words,” Pirro replied, before addressing Lauer. “You’re going, ‘No.’”
“This should focus on our office and our work. I don’t know we should be getting into hypotheticals,” Lauer said.
“Tim’s going to kill me. Do you know what I’m going to say?” Pirro asked.
Lauer said he did know, adding, “It’s off the record, and you’re not using it.”
“Then I’m not going to say it if he doesn’t want me to,” she said.
Sources who know the U.S. attorney have said she wants to be Trump’s next attorney general, after Pam Bondi was fired from the role on Thursday, according to New York Magazine.
“The judge is very close to the president, talks to him all the time. And she’d been trying to put the knife in Bondi, saying she’s not a prosecutor and doesn’t have control of the building,” one source told the magazine.
When asked whether Pirro is a contender to replace Bondi, Trump told New York Magazine they’re both “great people.”
Pirro has also denied having that goal, according to the report.
The Independent has contacted Pirro’s office for comment.
Pirro — a 74-year-old former judge, prosecutor and Fox News personality — was tapped by Trump to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., last year.
But her tenure has been marked by controversy, including failures to secure some high-profile indictments.
In February, a grand jury reportedly rejected her office’s attempt to indict a group of Democratic lawmakers who made a video urging members of the military and intelligence communities to refuse illegal orders.
Pirro’s office also repeatedly tried and failed to land criminal indictments in cases stemming from the Trump administration’s federal takeover of the nation’s capital, which saw a surge of federal law enforcement officers and National Guard troops patrolling the city streets to purportedly combat crime and illegal immigration.
Her office failed to land a felony charge against a man accused of throwing a sandwich at a federal agent last summer. The case received nationwide attention, and the man was quickly dubbed “Sandwich Guy.”
The charge was downgraded, and a jury later found him not guilty of misdemeanor assault.
Federal prosecutors also failed to persuade three different grand juries to indict Sydney Reid on felony charges for allegedly assaulting an FBI agent. They could not get a jury to agree to any of the charges against her until reducing the case to a single, lesser misdemeanor charge. A jury then acquitted Reid after a brief trial.
