it never rains but it pours: the further adventures of Mrs. Pirro

You folks remember Mrs. Pirro, right? Briefly, she's the former Westchester DA who was Karl Rove's personal choice for the Republican primary for Hillary's seat until she tanked so badly that she was forced out into the AG race which was later won by Mr. Cuomo. While it can't be said that it had any meaningful impact on the race (which was, to say the least, not terribly effective), Pirro followers were amused when in the closing days of the race it came out that an FBI wiretap of Mr. Kerik caught her asking him to put an illegal wiretap on her husband's boat in an attempt to catch him in the canoodling she suspected he was engaging in with, as it turns out, one of their neighbors.

Well, seems her taping habit extended into the workplace

The saga of Jeanine Pirro is about to take a dramatic new turn, with the disclosure that while serving as district attorney of Westchester, Ms. Pirro was in the habit of secretly recording work-related telephone conversations, and a federal grand jury wants to hear them.

That fact was disclosed in a filing in federal court in Manhattan in the course of an investigation the purpose of which is not yet fully in the public record. But the disclosures so far indicate that when Ms. Pirro left office in 2005 to run for state attorney general, she asked an investigator to destroy a box containing at least some of the tapes, an assistant district attorney in Westchester, Richard Hecht, wrote in a letter to the 2nd United States Circuit Court of Appeals.

The investigator, who is not identified in the letter, did not follow through, Mr. Hecht wrote.

So, not too good? No, less good than that.

One of the reasons this is of interest is that that Ms. Pirro's successor now is in possession of a tape suggesting Ms. Pirro failed to disclose evidence that could have helped a man whom Ms. Pirro subsequently charged with murder. But the existence of any tapes immediately raises the question of whom Ms. Pirro was talking to over her years in office and what conversations, whether of a political or legal nature, might be recorded in the surviving tapes...

This description of Ms. Pirro's alleged conduct is emerging in court filings before the 2nd Circuit. The appellate court is hearing the case of Anthony DiSimone, who was prosecuted for murder by Ms. Pirro's office in the gang-related murder of Louis Balancio, which occurred outside a bar in Yonkers in 1994. Mr. DiSimone was convicted in 2000, after turning himself in unexpectedly in 1999.

A federal judge overturned Mr. DiSimone's conviction earlier this year, after he served seven years in prison. The district judge, Charles Brieant of United States District Court in Manhattan, said Ms. Pirro's office had withheld evidence that should have been turned over in the case.

Mr. Hecht's letter suggests that the tapes of Ms. Pirro's conversations contain additional leads which were never entered into the case file, much less passed on to the defense. The two taped conversations, both from December 18, 1997, are of telephone calls between Ms. Pirro and the chief of criminal cases for the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, Mark Pomerantz. They discuss whom Ms. Pirro ought to charge with the high-profile murder.

According to a transcript of the conversation, Mr. Pomerantz told Ms. Pirro that an FBI informant had heard a different man, whom was also charged in connection to the murder, confess to holding down the victim while yet another man stabbed him.

"This tape was never maintained in any of the files relative to the Balancio homicide or for that matter in any file regularly maintained by the District Attorney's Office," Mr. Hecht wrote to the court. "Additionally, no written record of the taped conversations or the substance of either conversation was found in any of our Office files."

Well, color me gobsmacked. Who'd've ever have guessed a few years ago that Al Pirro would be the sympathetic figure in this relationship, much less the one with the fewest legal troubles?