A major bombshell from the Donald Trump-era U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) came on Friday morning, April 24, when the news broke that federal prosecutor and former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro was dropping the criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. MS NOW's Ken Dilanian, in response, described the news as a "180-degree surrender," telling his colleague Ana Cabrera, "What Jeanine Pirro is essentially conceding here is that there's no criminal case. There never was."

In an April 27 column, MS NOW's Steve Benen describes the Powell investigation's demise as a major humiliation for Pirro — whose "losing streak" at DOJ, he argues, is going from bad to worse.

"To be sure, the top federal prosecutor for Washington, D.C., didn't want to drop the case," Benen says of Pirro's decision. "Two weeks ago, two prosecutors from Pirro's office showed up without invitation or advance notice at Federal Reserve headquarters seeking a tour of the construction site. A week later, the former Fox News host said she would forge ahead with a case against Powell. Pirro was, however, quickly overwhelmed by reality."

The "Rachel Maddow Show" producer continues, "The politically motivated investigation obviously had no merit; a federal judge had already quashed the Justice Department's subpoenas, emphasizing the inconvenient fact that prosecutors 'produced essentially zero evidence' — and the longer the baseless case continued, the more it threatened to delay confirmation of Trump’s new Fed chair nominee."

Conservative Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), an outspoken critic of Pirro's Powell investigation, vowed to oppose the nomination of Kevin Warsh as a replacement for the Fed chair — whose term ends in mid-May — unless the probe ended.

"Short on options," Benen observes, "Pirro threw in the towel on Friday, and Kevin Warsh's odds of confirmation approached 100 percent soon after…. Pirro's failed effort against Powell was humiliating, but it coincided with a similarly humiliating effort to indict Democratic veterans in Congress who advised service members to follow the law, which coincided with a separate failed criminal investigation into (former President) Joe Biden. In fact, Pirro's office has lost so many closely watched cases, with such regularity, that it's been challenging to keep up. After the president fired (former U.S. Attorney General) Pam Bondi earlier this month, it sparked speculation as to whom Trump might choose as the next attorney general, and there was a round of chatter about whether Pirro would be among the top contenders."

Benen adds, "The odd thing is, it’s far from clear whether her repeated failures make her any less appealing to the White House — or more. On one hand, Trump rejects those seen as 'losers'; on the other, the hapless U.S. attorney keeps going after his perceived foes, indifferent to merit or propriety, which is exactly the kind of quality the president seems to be looking for at Main Justice."

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