Nevada judge Michele Fiore has blamed an FBI revenge plot after she was charged with spending donations to a police memorial fund on rent, bills, and her daughter’s wedding.
The Republican firebrand who has backed the Proud Boys militia and once promised to personally shoot refugees had raised funds for a statue to Alyn Beck, one of two Vegas cops murdered on duty in 2014.
But she has been suspended from the bench and faces up to 20 years in jail on wire fraud charges after she was accused of spending all $70,000 raised on herself.
The 53-year-old claimed she had been targeted by the FBI for supporting rancher Clive Bundy after he was charged over an armed stand-off between federal agents and militants at Oregon‘s Malheur Federal Wildlife Refuge in 2016.
‘For a decade I’ve been their target for standing up for what was right,’ she wrote in a statement. ‘As I go through this distressing and challenging time, fight again, and bring light to the shadows.’
Michele Fiore raised funds for a statue to murdered Vegas cop Alyn Beck, left, shot dead alongside his colleague Igor Soldo, right, but has been charged with spending them on her rent, her bills, and her daughter’s wedding
The city was outraged when Beck, 41, and his colleague Igor Soldo, 31, were gunned down by a pair of white supremacists as they ate lunch at a pizza restaurant in June 2014.
Fiore was a Las Vegas City councilwoman when she spoke at the opening of a memorial park named after Beck in 2018, and announced she planned to raise money for a statue to the murdered officer.
The indictment filed in the Nevada Supreme Court on Wednesday claims she contracted a company to create the statue and falsely told it she ‘had appropriated discretionary funds through the City of Las Vegas’ to pay for it.
She set up a charity in July 2019 to solicit donations claiming that ‘100 percent of the contributions’ would go to the cause.
But none of the money was used for the statue and all went directly to bank accounts she controlled, prosecutors allege.
‘Fiore instructed prospective donors to write a check to a bank account that Fiore controlled at Bank of Nevada,’ they claim.
‘Fiore directed that money to be spent not for the charitable purpose solicited but for her own personal expenses.’
Fiore’s daughters, Sheena and Savanah, featured prominently on a calendar she posed for in 2015 dubbed ‘Michele Fiore’s 2016 Walk The Talk 2nd Amendment Calendar.’
That year she sent out an infamous Christmas card of her family holding pistols and semi-automatics, including her five-year-old grandson Jake who held a Walther p22.
Fiore was appointed to the Nye County justice court by the county commission in 2022 and was elected to a four-year term on the court only last month
Michele Fiore was supported by attorney Michael Sanft and her two daughters Sheena and Savanah, as she spoke outside court on Friday
The daughters previously featured prominently on a calendar she posed for in 2015 dubbed ‘Michele Fiore’s 2016 Walk The Talk 2nd Amendment Calendar.’
That year she sent out an infamous Christmas card of her family holding pistols and semi-automatics, including her five-year-old grandson Jake who held a Walther p22
She defended the image saying: ‘If you look real close, you’ll see that his finger is not on the trigger.
‘That five-year-old grandson of mine has total trigger control.
‘I think giving firearms as a present and getting firearms as a present is a great present, and I think because Christmas is a family affair, our ultimate responsibility is to protect and make sure our family is safe.’
Months earlier she had hit the headlines after saying she would shoot Syrian refugees herself when asked if Nevada should offer them asylum.
‘What, are you kidding me? I’m about to fly to Paris and shoot ’em in the head myself,’ she told a local radio station.
‘I am not okay with Syrian refugees. I’m not okay with terrorists. I’m okay with putting them down, blacking them out, just put a piece of brass in their ocular cavity and end their miserable life. I’m good with that.’
Fiore has also come under fire for having pushed ‘Right to Try’ laws to allow patients to choose experimental treatments, claiming that cancer is a fungus and could be cured by baking soda.
‘If you have cancer, which I believe is a fungus, and we can put a PICC line into your body and we’re flushing with, say, salt water, sodium carbonate, through that line and flushing out the fungus,’ she said in 2015.
And she pushed a bill that would allow students to carry guns on college campuses, suggesting it could decrease sexual assaults.
The Republican firebrand was an early supporter of former President Donald Trump
She ran briefly for Nevada governor in 2022 before attempting to be elected state treasurer
In 2006 she co-wrote and starred in a low budget, semi-autobiographical film called Siren playing the role of a wife and mom who tries to become a rock singer.
‘If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I wonder how many men will want to assault them,’ she told the New York Times.
‘The sexual assaults that are occurring would go down once these sexual predators get a bullet in their head.’
Her ties to rancher Clive Bundy and his family put her in a media spotlight during armed standoffs between self-described citizen militia members and federal law enforcement in Bunkerville, Nevada, in 2014 and Malheur, Oregon, in 2016.
Fiore was credited with helping negotiate an end to the standoff and diffusing the situation.
According to the Washington Post, she ‘began conducting a complex balancing act, calming down the terrified occupiers while telling them that she shared their outrage and also reaching out to the FBI to prevent a shootout.’
The FBI special agent in charge said afterward that Fiore’s help had been important and thanked her for her ‘significant assistance’.
But she claims that the agency has held a grudge against her for years after their case against Bundy was thrown out of court when evidence was withheld from the defense.
‘It was not the first time in Nevada that the federal government has tried to cheat the system by working in the shadows, neither would it be the last,’ she said on Wednesday night.
She was appointed to the Nye County justice court by the county commission in 2022 and was elected to a four-year term on the court only last month.
The 2014 murder of the two police officers by white supremacists horrified the city
But she was suspended on July 18 after a unanimous vote of the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline.
Fiore pleaded not-guilty to four counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud during her arraignment in a Las Vegas federal court Friday.
She remains at liberty on her own cognizance ahead of her next scheduled appearance in the dock on September 9.
