Michele Fiore, a Republican judge and former Las Vegas City Council member, was convicted in the fall of 2024 of defrauding people who gave money for a memorial statue honoring two fallen police officers, according to MS NOW. Prosecutors called the case one of the most brazen frauds they had ever seen. Jurors reached a guilty verdict in less than two hours.
The donated money apparently did not go to the statue; it went to plastic surgery, rent, and her daughter’s wedding. Jon Ralston, editor of The Nevada Independent, which followed the case closely, said many people contributed, including the governor. “A lot of people donated money, including the governor,” Ralston said. “The evidence at the trial was overwhelming that the money she raised never went to the statue.”
Fiore has been dubbed “Lady Trump” because of her embrace of the president. She said the FBI, the Justice Department, and the media had set her up, and she said she sent an 18-page document to the White House asserting her innocence. In April of last year, President Donald Trump granted her a full pardon before a judge could sentence her. He has never explained why.
Conviction, a White House pardon, and a failed bid to keep her seat
The White House did not dispute, in a statement to MS NOW, that she was guilty of defrauding donors. Trump has a record of pardoning and welcoming convicted figures, as when he met with convicted election denier Tina Peters in the White House to discuss election integrity. “Michele Fiore, a former RNC Committeewoman and elected official from Nevada, made a name for herself through her outspoken and maverick personality,” a White House official wrote.
“A supporter of President Trump, she was also the first female Republican Majority Leader in the Nevada State Assembly. Due to her outspoken conservative views, she became a target and incurred government investigation and prosecution. She was convicted of wire fraud, but now she has received a pardon.”
People who had tracked her career were surprised by the pardon. Born in Brooklyn, Fiore was seen as an extreme voice in Nevada politics. In 2015 she drew national attention after saying she would “shoot ’em in the head myself” in reference to Syrian refugees. A family Christmas card she sent showed several generations, including a young child, holding firearms.
She later told The Associated Press that she had been talking about terrorists, while adding that she still did not want Syrian refugees in her state. She has described cancer as a fungus that can be flushed out with sodium bicarbonate. In 2016, she defended her support for Cliven Bundy, a far-right survivalist who orchestrated an armed standoff with federal agents in 2014. “You can’t govern at gunpoint and expect the American people not to point their guns back,” Fiore said.
Her 2021 run for governor of Nevada included an ad in which she climbed out of a truck in a red dress with a gun on her hip. She used the “Lady Trump” name in that spot, firing at bottles meant to stand for vaccine mandates, critical race theory, and voter fraud. On Jan. 31, 2020, she stood with Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman at the grand opening of the Alyn Beck Memorial Park, holding a statue of Alyn Beck. Joe Lombardo was pictured with them as well.
Fiore’s attorney, Kristine Wildevelt, said documents about the case were submitted to the DOJ and defended the pardon. “The White House did an extremely thorough job vetting Michele,” Wildevelt said. “This was a completely valid pardon. It was a well-deserved pardon.” Fiore did appear on a few local outlets afterward, including 8 News Now and Tom Letizia’s The Middle Ground show.
Prison time was avoided, but the pardon did not restore her place on the bench or carry her through the next election. She was a justice of the peace when the 2024 conviction came down. The Nevada board of judicial discipline suspended her, and the courts have left that suspension in place despite the pardon. Earlier this year, she ran to keep her seat in Pahrump, a conservative Republican stronghold.
“Her re-election campaign this year was solely based on her being a victim of the deep state, a conspiracy, and that Donald Trump stood by her,” Ralston said.
Ralston said the Trump association did not help in that deep-red county. “I think a lot of people, including myself, were surprised how badly she did in that election. I mean, she finished in third out of four candidates. It wasn’t even close,” he said. She later put out a 14-part YouTube series, The Fiore Files – Breaking the Narrative, in which she claimed innocence and made a series of baseless allegations.
“You want to know the facts? You want to know how the jury came back with their verdict? They were lied to by the DOJ and the FBI, and all of my defense testimony was struck,” she said in one episode.
Fiore’s pardon sits among other clemency grants Trump has given to Republican politicians convicted of fraud or corruption. The pardon process itself has drawn legal challenges, such as when a former pardon attorney sued DOJ, alleging her firing was tied to her refusal to restore Mel Gibson’s gun rights.
The list includes Scott Jenkins, a Virginia sheriff sentenced to 10 years for bribery; Michael Grimm, a former New York congressman convicted of tax fraud; and John Rowland, a former Connecticut governor who pleaded guilty to corruption. “I think it sends the message that it’s completely political, that it’s not based in fact, that Trump is always going to put loyalty to him above anything else, including obvious facts of a criminal conviction,” Ralston said of Fiore’s pardon.
He also said he would guess Trump knows little about the case itself. “I would guess Trump knows nothing about the case itself, and just it was Michele Fiore, who’s been one of his loudest, most vociferous supporters since he first ran, and so he gave her a pardon out of that political loyalty, that relationship. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I doubt anything like it has ever happened in the history of the country,” Ralston said.
“That a person – who has the highest office in the land – would use this power to help friends, political loyalists, lawyers whom he knows who were hired to help get pardons with no regard to whether the pardon was deserved,” he added.
Presidents from both parties have faced criticism over the years for questionable pardons. “But this across-the-board, widespread use of the pardon power to benefit people whose sole characteristic is they were loyal to Trump is astonishing,” Ralston said.
Published: Oct 7, 2026 07:30 am