The twenty-thousand-dollar tweet
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The story surfaced during a discussion of internal Fox News communications released through discovery in the Smartmatic defamation suit, in which Jeanine Pirro was quoted describing how hard she worked for the president and the party, and saying she cared about one thing: obtaining a pardon for her ex-husband. 

The request

Kiriakou's contribution was a first-hand one. "I asked her to help me," he says, "and I talked to her assistant, and she says, '20,000.'" 

His reaction, as he renders his side of the conversation: "Come on, man. I don't have 20,000. I'm just asking for a tweet. Just a tweet. Pardon Kiriakou." 

The price did not move. Kiriakou's answer was: "Forget it." 

What it cost him

Kiriakou notes that this was effectively the whole of his dealings with Pirro. He had been on her show once, the sum was named, he declined, "and she never invited me back." 

Asked whether he thought the tweet would have worked had he paid for it, Kiriakou answered with a single word: "No." 

The pattern

The episode belongs to a set of similar approaches Kiriakou has described from the same period, in which access to a presidential pardon was treated as a commodity with a price attached. He raises the Pirro request immediately before recounting a letter he had received the previous day telling him he would be called as a witness in litigation arising from a far larger solicitation, $2 million, he says, made to him five and a half years earlier. 

The contrast Kiriakou draws is one of scale rather than of kind. In the Pirro case the ask was not for intercession with the White House but for a single public post; the figure quoted was $20,000; and he did not have it. His summary of the transaction, and of Fox's cast generally, is delivered as an aside: "such high prices, such low, such small servings." 

Kiriakou also relays the detail supplied mid-broadcast by his producer about the conviction behind Pirro's own pardon interest, a 2000 conviction on conspiracy and tax evasion counts, seventeen months in prison, disbarment and later reinstatement, and a pardon granted in January 2021 among the outgoing president's last acts. 

See also

- Giuliani Pardon Solicitation
- The Witness Letter
- Rudy Giuliani
