Prosecutors called it one of the most brazen frauds they had ever seen.

A jury took less than two hours in the fall of 2024 to convict Republican Michele Fiore, a judge and former member of the Las Vegas City Council, of defrauding donors by raising money to build a memorial statue for two fallen police officers — only to spend the donated funds on plastic surgery, rent and her daughter’s wedding.

“A lot of people donated money, including the governor,” said Jon Ralston, editor of The Nevada Independent, which covered the case closely. “The evidence at the trial was overwhelming that the money she raised never went to the statue.”

But Fiore, who has been dubbed “Lady Trump” because of her embrace of the president, still had a card to play. She said she had been set up by the FBI, the Justice Department and the media. She said she had sent an 18-page document to the White House asserting her innocence.

In April of last year, President Donald Trump granted Fiore a full pardon before a judge had a chance to sentence her. He has never explained why.

In a statement to MS NOW, the White House did not dispute that she was guilty of defrauding donors.

“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.”

“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.”

Jon Ralston, editor of The Nevada Independent.

But the pardon of Fiore came as a surprise to those who had followed her career. Brooklyn-born Fiore was seen as an extreme voice in Nevada politics who made national news in 2015 after saying she would “shoot ’em in the head myself” in reference to Syrian refugees. She sent out a family Christmas card that showed several generations, including a young child, holding firearms.

Fiore later clarified some of her remarks on Syrian refugees, telling The Associated Press that she was talking about terrorists. She did add 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, and in 2016, she defended her support of 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.

In 2021, she ran for governor of Nevada. Her campaign ad featured her climbing out of a truck, wearing a red dress and a gun on her hip. She flaunted the moniker “Lady Trump,” shooting the gun at bottles representing vaccine mandates, critical race theory and voter fraud.

Fiore declined MS NOW’s request for an interview, but her attorney, Kristine Wildevelt, defended the pardon, saying they submitted documents about Fiore’s case to the DOJ.

“The White House did an extremely thorough job vetting Michele,” she said. “This was a completely valid pardon. It was a well-deserved pardon.”

Fiore did participate in a few local media appearances after receiving the pardon, including with 8 News Now and Tom Letizia’s “The Middle Ground” show.

Trump’s pardon spared Fiore from prison, but it didn’t save her political and judicial career. She was serving as justice of the peace when she was convicted in 2024, and the Nevada board of judicial discipline suspended her from the bench. The courts have upheld that suspension despite the pardon.

But Fiore wasn’t going out quietly, and earlier this year, she ran to retain 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.

But in that deep-red Nevada county, claiming to be closely associated with Trump didn’t help Fiore after all.

“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,” Ralston.

The pardon of Fiore was one of a string of grants of clemency he has issued to Republican politicians convicted of fraud or corruption.

Those include 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.

“I would guess Trump knows nothing about the case itself, and just it was Michelle 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,” he said.

After the pardon, she produced a 14-part YouTube series called, “The Fiore Files — Breaking the Narrative,” in which she proclaimed her innocence, making 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.

As MS NOW has spotlighted in this series, Trump has used the clemency power unlike any president in modern history, throwing out the old rulebook and disregarding the clear findings of judges and juries.

“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.”

Presidents of both parties have been criticized over the years about 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.

Casey Gannon contributed to this reporting

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From MS Now.