Fox New host Jeanine Pirro will seemingly stop at nothing to defend the commander in chief, but she appeared to take things to a new level on her show Saturday night, blaming former President Barack Obama for the mess the White House finds itself in over the domestic abuse allegations against former aide Rob Porter. The retired judge threw out the eyebrow-raising accusation at the end of her opening monologue that amounted to a long, detailed defense of White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and how he handled the revelations about Porter.

“You want to stop a four-star general who is running the White House, who believes in chain of command, who makes a decision within forty minutes, because you hate President Trump? Find another scapegoat. You might want to look at the last president.”

"You want to stop a four-star general who is running the White House, who believes in chain of command, who makes a decision within forty minutes because you hate President Trump? Find another scapegoat."



My #OpeningStatement: pic.twitter.com/F4NMRoLfSL — Jeanine Pirro (@JudgeJeanine) February 11, 2018

The strangest thing about Pirro shaking the table and pointing the finger at Obama for the administration’s failure to get rid of Porter earlier is that she didn’t really elaborate on how she could make that leap. But later in the show former Trump White House staffer Sebastian Gorka seemed to provide a clue, suggesting investigators may have delayed Porter’s security clearance to make sure red flags didn’t show up in time, in order to ensure the administration would have to find a way to deal with the scandal. “There may be a deliberate minefield put in place where they know somebody like this has skeletons in their closet and they slow-roll everything just to make things like this explode a few months later,” Gorka said, providing no evidence of his explosive claim.

Pirro vehemently defended Kelly by portraying him as a victim of a cunning Porter. “For everyone looking for someone to blame, chill out. You want to blame someone? Blame the batterer,” Pirro said. “He doesn’t walk around with a scarlet letter or a sign on his forehead that says ‘I beat women’.” She went on to characterize “the batterer” as “cunning and clever” while “presenting himself as a charming individual.” That description though doesn’t quite square with reality considering Kelly had known at least the broad outlines of the allegations against Porter, which he denies, for months. When the allegations then became public, Kelly’s first instinct was to defend Porter as “a man of true integrity an honor” before essentially firing him or allowing him to resign.

Now Axios is reporting that Porter is telling his associates that some senior White house officials encouraged him to “stay and fight” the domestic abuse allegations. Porter is also claiming he “never misrepresented anything” to Kelly, which is not what the chief of staff’s associates are saying.

Pirro’s full-throated defense of Kelly came amid word that Pirro is under discussions with Trump about possibly cooperating on a book that would essentially be a counter to Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury. Trump has reportedly agreed to be interviewed for Pirro’s planned book that some in the West Wing are calling No Fire, No Fury.