Inside the salacious scandal that derailed Jeanine Pirro's political career
Inside the salacious scandal that derailed Jeanine Pirro's political career
Inside the salacious scandal that derailed Jeanine Pirro's political career
No other U.S. attorney nominee is known to have come under a federal probe after being caught on tape scheming to catch a cheating spouse in the act.
Long before she was a Fox News host who pushed pro-Trump election conspiracy theories, Jeanine Pirro was an ambitious New York politician whose career stalled after she was recorded plotting to bug her then-husband’s boat to catch him in an affair.
The revelation rocked Pirro’s campaign for New York attorney general nearly 20 years ago, resulting in days of front-page headlines in the city’s tabloids (“BUG THIS LOVE BOAT!” blared the Daily News cover).
The conversation took place in 2005 between Pirro and the former commissioner of the New York Police Department, Bernard Kerik, a close ally of Rudy Giuliani’s.
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According to WNBC, Pirro believed her then-husband, Albert Pirro, was using the family’s 26-foot boat — the Christie, named after the couple’s daughter — for sexual trysts with his then-mistress. Pirro appeared to grow frustrated that an employee of Kerik’s security firm was reluctant to plant a recording device on the vessel.
“We can just simply say, if there is an issue, that I am redecorating it for our anniversary,” Pirro said, according to WNBC.
“But Jeanine, I’m having the same problem with everybody,” Kerik allegedly replied. “Everybody is panic-stricken because it’s you. I’ve gone out on a limb. I had two other people looking at this. It’s a problem.”
At a press conference after the WNBC report came out, an emotional Pirro insisted that no recording device was placed on the boat and blasted the federal probe as a “waste of taxpayer money."
“I said a lot of things, but what matters is what I did and didn’t do — and what I did was vent,” said Pirro, who was running for state attorney general at the time.
Two months after the revelation of the tapes, she lost the race for state Attorney General to future Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a landslide, marking the end of her political career.
What happened over the next two decades is well known. Pirro became a TV star and one of Trump’s most ardent defenders.