WASHINGTON – As a prominent Fox News host, Jeanine Pirro – a friend of President Donald Trump and now a top Justice Department official – repeatedly sought to support Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election by claiming widespread voting machine fraud.

Newly filed court documents allege, however, that Pirro later acknowledged during court depositions under oath that she believed no voting machine fraud or failures had occurred and that the 2020 election Trump lost was, in her own words, "fair and free."

The documents were filed Aug. 19 by lawyers for the Smartmatic voting technology company as part of its ongoing $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox that was first filed in February 2021. Pirro was just one of many prominent Fox News on-air personalities who worked to help Trump push his false “Stop the Steal” narrative after his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Smartmatic's lawswuit alleges Pirro and others at Fox News falsely implicated Smartmatic in a made-up conspiracy to steal the election from Trump.

That claim has been debunked by a host of investigations, including the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which said in a November 2020 statement that there was "no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised."

Pirro was confirmed as United States Attorney for the District of Columbia in August on Aug. 2 and now commands one of the largest federal prosecutorial and investigative offices in the nation.

While the U.S. attorney job doesn’t generally involve election issues, the office led the prosecutions of Trump supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in effort to overturn Biden's victory and keep Trump in office. Trump pardoned the vast majority of those defendants after taking office and commuted the the sentences of others.

In Smartmatic’s “Statement of Undisputed Material Facts,” Smartmatic quotes Pirro as testifying during one of her two depositions in November and December 2023 that, "I believe that there's been no showing that Smartmatic engaged in any problems."

That's a big change from Pirro's Nov. 21, 2020 claim on her "Justice with Judge Jeanine" show, in which she described the case that Trump’s lawyers were laying out: “An organized criminal enterprise, a conspiracy by Democrats, especially in cities controlled and corrupted by Democrats,” and “a company called Dominion which they say started in Venezuela with Cuban money and with the assistance of Smartmatic software” in which “a back door is capable of flipping votes.”

'You work for the people'

Many Fox News on-air personalities, including Pirro, repeated the “stolen election” falsehoods even after being warned by people inside and outside Fox News that what they were saying was false or, at best, unproven, Smartmatic counsel J. Erik Connolly and other lawyers said in the new filing. Those cited include Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters.

But legal analysts say that Pirro’s comments in her deposition show a level of partisanship and willingness to mislead the public that should disqualify her from holding such a top position at DOJ.

“If you’re in the Department of Justice, you work for the people and your job is to administer the laws of the nation, and it is quite hard to trust that the people that Trump has put in power there are doing that,” said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the non-partisan watchdog group Public Citizen.

That is especially the case with Pirro, Gilbert told USA TODAY, “where she has a position of power in the very administration she was working to pretend had won an election they lost.”

Pirro oversees a broad array of cases including white-collar crime, civil rights abuses and terrorism, drug trafficking and transnational threats − and most recently, prosecutions stemming from Trump's surge of federal agents and the National Guard into Washington, D.C.

Pirro's career as judge, district attorney

Pirro worked for 15 years as an assistant district attorney in Westchester County, New York before being elected judge on the Westchester County Court. She spent 12 years as the elected Westchester district attorney.

A spokesperson for Fox News would not respond beyond the company's statement on the latest court filings, which said in part that, “The evidence shows that Smartmatic’s business and reputation were badly suffering long before" any potentially false claims were made. The statement also said Smartmatic also "grossly inflated its damage claims to generate headlines and chill free speech."

In its legal responses, Fox News said that what matters in a defamation case isn’t what Pirro believes now, but what was her state of mind in November 2020.

Fox’s own Statement of Undisputed Facts says Pirro “wouldn’t have even gotten involved in a discussion” about the Trump campaign’s election-fraud allegations if she did not think there was truth to them following the 2020 election.

Pirro’s DOJ office, and the White House, did not respond to requests for comment on the new court documents.

But before her Senate confirmation last month, White House spokesperson Harrison Fields defended Pirro’s qualifications, saying, “Judge Jeanine, a highly respected and accomplished attorney and judge, is dedicated to President Trump’s agenda to restore safety and justice in our nation’s capital. Baseless, last-minute character assassination attempts are desperate and undermine the safety of D.C. residents and tourists who would benefit from her swift confirmation.”

Smartmatic declined to comment specifically on Pirro.

More broadly, the company said in a statement, "Fox executives and its personalities have consistently lied to their viewers. They knew what they were saying was untrue when they were willingly destroying Smartmatic's reputation, though when under oath they admitted they knew better the whole time."

Both parties have asked a judge for a summary judgement − or quick resolution − to the case.

Smartmatic’s ongoing case relies on similar evidence as a lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems that Fox settled in 2023 for $787.5 million. But the new tranche of 468 pages of unredacted documents, filed in New York State Supreme Court, provide more detail because they contain newly unredacted versions of previously released court filings.

'A reckless maniac'

Lawyers for Smartmatic allege that after Trump lost in the November 2020 election, and as he fought to stay in office, Pirro used her show "Justice with Judge Jeanine" to promote baseless allegations that Dominion and its competitor Smartmatic had conspired to rig the election against Trump.

Many of Pirro’s comments advanced the false theory that machines made by Dominion were being used to flip votes from Trump to Biden. Her use of her Fox News show to question the legitimacy of the 2020 election became so worrisome that the network canceled one of her episodes out of fear for what she might say, Smartmatic alleges.

Pirro was warned against making such claims by Jerry Andrews, the executive producer for Fox News live weekend primetime in late 2020, including Pirro's show "Justice with Judge Jeanine," Connolly and the Smartmatic legal team allege.

“You should be very careful with this stuff and protect yourself given the ongoing calls for evidence (about the election being stolen) that has not materialized,” Andrews told her in one email days after the Nov. 3 election. "You (Pirro) should be VERY careful w(ith) this. There are things we know now that were not out there on Thursday night when these allegations first surfaced."

Pirro responded by saying she had spoken with Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott. “Know how to handle,” she told her producer, Smartmatic says.

Nevertheless, several of the election fraud claims from Pirro’s draft opening remarks for her show, which a Fox News “Brainroom” had found to be "INCORRECT” were still aired during Pirro's November 14 opening monologue, the lawsuit alleges, including that "6,000 votes from Trump to Biden were switched."

In another email cited in the court filings, Andrews called Pirro a "reckless maniac" for airing false claims about a stolen election despite being told they were incorrect.

Pirro 'does not believe that Smartmatic rigged' the election

In all, Pirro was deposed twice by Smartmatic in 2023 and once by Dominion.

The Smartmatic depositions are undergoing redactions and litigation is underway to determine what might be made public, a spokesperson for Connolly told USA TODAY.

But the new filing includes snippets of them, detailing Pirro's private beliefs.

"Jeanine Pirro, host of Justice with Judge Jeanine, does not believe that Smartmatic rigged the 2020 election or conspired with Dominion to rig the 2020 election," the Aug. 19 court filing alleges.

"She does not believe the Fraud Lie, the Dominion Lie, the Alteration Lie, or the Overseas Lie. Even now, years after her publications, Pirro admitted: 'I believe that there's been no showing that Smartmatic engaged in any problems,'" the court filing says.

Pirro also admitted to receiving before her shows information from Dominion debunking the election fraud claims; from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) confirming the absence of any widespread vote manipulation; and from the Fox News "Brainroom" confirming that the election fraud claims were false, Smartmatic also says in its recently unredacted filing, citing Pirro's own deposition testimony.

"Notwithstanding what she and others said on her show," Smartmatic said, "Pirro believes the 2020 election was 'fair and free.'"

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Top Trump DOJ official spread false election claims as Fox News host but later reversed

Reporting by Josh Meyer, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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