Pence told Fox News that he was "not only confident" that he'd be on the 2020 ticket, but that he was also "confident that we're going to win in 2020. Pirro was sworn in at midnight on New Year's Eve 1994 -- just 20 minutes after the newspaper heiress Anne Scripps Douglas was bludgeoned in Bronxville. She vividly remembers the humiliation of watching the local 11 o'clock news when her husband's child and former mistress appeared as the night's exclusive.
Suddenly her eyes narrow. ''Can you believe this? '' She called the investigation an ''invasive and hostile process'' -- curious words from a career prosecutor, but friends say she had come to think of the multiyear probe, by United States Attorney Elliott Jacobson, a former protege of Rudy Giuliani's, as ''Starr-like'' in its vigilance. What happened to judge janines hand signal. ''I -- I don't know how to answer that. In one sting operation conducted by her office, a mobster was caught discussing her photograph. She has earned a reputation for being disarmingly tough. But all that changed when her husband of 23 years -- one of the wealthiest and most influential real-estate lawyers in Westchester County, lobbyist for Donald Trump and major deep-pocket for a slew of state Republicans (including his wife) -- was indicted on 33 counts of Federal tax fraud.
"Maybe they'll have to start taking matters into their own hands, " Lara Trump told Fox News' Jeanine Pirro. ''How the hell are you a Republican? '' Pirro rose fast in the Westchester District Attorney's office -- her first job out of law school. ''He was just dashing, '' she says now, the kind of guy who worked three jobs but still picked up the tab for everybody. ''Alex, '' Jeanine replied, ''today boys can be anything they want. '' On Feb. 23, Pirro stood by her man as the cameras clicked and the videotapes rolled and the New York State Republican Party watched its great female hope slip away. What happened to judge janines hand in hands. ''Um, '' she says softly, ''he's the father of my children. Even for Hillary Clinton, who might be the only political woman in America who in the Husbands Behaving Badly Sweepstakes actually has Jeanine Pirro beat. Her friends point out that had a scandal erupted in, say, the District Attorney's office, few would expect Al Pirro to be familiar with the operations. Sara Gaffney Mahoney, an aide to the Governor, puts it this way: ''So many people in the party feel so strongly about Jeanine because she truly stands for what a lot of us believe in, and that is tolerance. '' That position, newly occupied by Mary O. Donohue, would have been Pirro's for the taking, say sources inside Gov. She was supposed to be the next Senator, or the next Governor, or at least the next Lieutenant Governor.
I'm not gonna tell you what to do. He lingered for four years, during which Jeanine fell in love with Al Pirro -- a law student four years older, whom she describes as having been ''the most brilliant, energetic, high-powered'' guy on campus. Today, Ferraro remembers threatening the Democratic Party brass, ''If you do this to her, I'll come up to Westchester and endorse her. '' ''Do we have a headache yet? Meghan McCain has shared her unfiltered thoughts on a number of guests during her time on "The View. Though his wife is careful not to talk about the specifics of his case (''I promised my husband's lawyers that I'd keep my mouth shut''), there is one area she has no problem addressing: whether or not she should have been more aware of her husband's business and income-tax methods. "I have not seen any evidence that Smarmatic software was used to delete, change, alter, anything related to vote tabulation, " OSET Institute tech development director Eddie Perez told Fox News. ''We're fine, '' she's saying into her cell phone. They don't want to cry in their soup. Today, Pirro is best known for her unique -- and usually winning -- approach to the office. ''The presumption is not that things are wrong. Over the next two hours, she'll get three cell calls from her office updating her on a breaking homicide case and learn how to play the Rapid River video game. For the second time, her eyes fill up with tears. I was still like, 'Who are you? '''
Libby Pataki remembers the first time she met Jeanine, at a domestic-violence seminar more than 20 years ago, where Pirro was speaking. It put Jeanine in a most precarious position: how should a District Attorney handle being married to an alleged criminal? "Sidney Powell's client are the people of the United States of America, and that's who she is fighting for right now, " Trump's ex-national security adviser said. ''Just a second, '' she tells them. It's Saturday afternoon and Jeanine Pirro is sitting behind a plate of Double Play Nachos at the All-Star Cafe in midtown Manhattan. Or that he has another child?
Esther Ferris never forgot that, and so it was that she reared Jeanine, in 1950's small-town America, to believe that girls should do great things -- and dress well at the same time. ''No, '' she answers quickly and firmly. That suit, of course, had been the first shoe that dropped. But I'm not going to immerse myself in self-pity. One of their early encounters was in line at the campus bookstore, where he worked as a cashier. Her son, Alex, is 10; her daughter, Kiki, 13. ''And she said to each one, 'You're an A' or 'You're a B. ''' After each bomb, Pirro consulted a child psychiatrist: how do you tell your kids that Daddy's been indicted? At 47, Pirro had, and still has, a rare combination of substance and style. ''And my children needed to know that the family would stay together. '' In two years Pirro will be up for re-election. She gets teary and takes a deep breath. Especially when you eyeball them and say: 'You know who I am.
It was hard to forget that the last rising female political superstar from New York was also derailed by accusations about her husband, an Italian businessman. For a moment, Jeanine Pirro considers getting out of the car and ripping down the signs herself, but then she reconsiders; sisterhood has its limits. Still, Pirro's indictment came as no great shock to observers. In other words, Pirro might have written her own ticket. The two of us are alone in the booth. ''Maybe I gave him too much leeway. Now the woman was suing for paternity. ''It's one of the things I always tease her about when I run into her, '' says Geraldine Ferraro. "We really need to lean into protecting our most vulnerable—people with chronic and severe medical conditions, especially the elderly because we know that they are most at risk, " Surgeon General Jerome Adams said.
It's evening in her office in White Plains, most of her staff has left for the night and Pirro is sitting next to a framed autographed picture from Governor Pataki: ''Jeanine, To the best D. A. in America. '' Oddly enough, Donohue -- the ''safe'' choice -- had her own husband problem within 10 days of being sworn in, when the police were called to her home for a ''domestic incident''; weeks later, she announced her separation from her husband. The GOP senator said Nancy Pelosi "gave in" to Mitch McConnell, and that the "dangerous" Senate impeachment trial will end in days, not weeks. A larger percentage of U. adults say they believe the Democratic presidential candidate has the traits best suited for the job. The kind of guy that lots of women were attracted to? "I thank you for fighting for me, and you know who you are, " the Fox News personality said during the final episode of "Justice With Judge Jeanine. ''It's like fighting in a fugue state... and, my God, I'm not even Italian! '' Her friends say she never fell apart. She taps her French-manicured nails on a headline from the morning paper, the latest on Hillary Clinton's possible run for the Senate -- a race that Pirro herself might have been in, on the G. O. P. side, had her husband not gone and messed up the plan. "Be totally objective, anyone watching this must condemn it, " Pirro said. She drops her cell phone back into her Prada handbag, uncrosses her oft-noted great legs and instructs her driver to slow down. In her third year, she successfully lobbied for Federal funds to start one of the first domestic-violence prosecution units in the country, and before long she'd made spousal and child abuse her causes. That's why I said he should resign, " said the Ohio Republican.
By the end of her first week, she was leading the nationally televised manhunt for Douglas's killer (who turned out to be the heiress's young husband, who had jumped off the Tappan Zee Bridge). ''Yeah, '' says Pirro, rolling her eyes. The loss of a statewide Pirro candidacy, however temporary it may be, was crushing to the Republican Party. From the moment his wife stepped into the political spotlight, Al Pirro has been defending himself against a constant barrage of accusations while Jeanine has contended with the persistent hissing that she's married to the mob. "I don't want to sugarcoat any of this because it's so difficult. "Can we see the evidence Rudy, can we see it? " Three years later, in 1993, she won the job she really coveted, District Attorney, another first for women in Westchester. "Joe Biden is doing absolutely nothing to counter all of this aggression on the world stage, and his pathetic, feckless weakness, it is causing all of this, " fellow Fox News host Hannity said, echoing Pirro's sentiment. ''Her hands are completely clean in this, '' insists Libby Pataki. It had gotten Ferraro-ish for the couple. Also indicted on 38 counts is Pirro's brother, Anthony, an accountant who has been handling the couple's tax returns since the early 1980's. ''I didn't have the luxury of breaking down, '' she says. ''I don't think there's any question, '' Pirro says, ''that women are judged not by what they've done but by what their spouses have done or not done.
Pirro, says Libby Pataki, always understood, ''You need to learn how to play the game, walk the walk and talk the talk. In law school, at Albany, she made law review. ''I don't want to meet her; I don't want to know her. ''