As reported in this AP article, “President Donald Trump has pardoned a Nevada Republican politician who was awaiting sentencing on federal charges that she used money meant for a statue honoring a slain police officer for personal costs, including plastic surgery.” Here is more:
Michele Fiore, a former Las Vegas city councilwoman and state lawmaker who ran unsuccessfully in 2022 for state treasurer, was found guilty in October of six counts of federal wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. She was out of custody ahead of her sentencing, which had been scheduled for next month.
In a lengthy statement Thursday on Facebook, the loyal Trump supporter expressed gratitude to the president while also accusing the U.S. government and “select media outlets” of a broad, decade-long conspiracy to “target and dismantle” her life. The White House confirmed Fiore had been pardoned but did not comment on the president’s decision.
The pardon, issued Wednesday, comes less than a week after Fiore lost a bid for a new trial. She had been facing the possibility of decades in prison. Federal prosecutors said at trial that Fiore, 54, had raised more than $70,000 for the statue of a Las Vegas police officer who was fatally shot in 2014 in the line of duty, but had instead spent some of it on cosmetic surgery, rent and her daughter’s wedding. “Michele Fiore used a tragedy to line her pockets,” federal prosecutor Dahoud Askar said….
Fiore, who does not have a law degree, was appointed as a judge in deep-red Nye County in 2022 shortly after she lost her campaign for state treasurer. She was elected last June to complete the unexpired term of a judge who died but had been suspended without pay amid her legal troubles…. In her statement Thursday, Fiore also said she plans to return to the bench next week. Nye County said it is awaiting an update on Fiore’s current suspension from the state Commission on Judicial Discipline, which told The Associated Press in an email that it was aware that Fiore had been pardoned but that it didn’t have further comment on her situation.
As highlighted in posts here and here from last month, it seems that persons convicted of various white-collar offenses are now those most likely to get the benefit of Prez Trump’s clemency pen. This list at the Justice Depatment of “Clemency Grants by President Donald J. Trump (2025-Present),” details that the last dozen or so grants are all of white-collar defendants. (In addition, that list includes an early March communtation of the sentences Jean Pinkard who was apparently convicted of opioid distributions and whose commulation received little press beyond small converage in this story. I would guess that “Pardon Czar” Alice Marie Johnson may have had a role in the Pinkard commutation, but likely not all the more recent fraud grants.)