Left: Michele Fiore speaks after her conviction for defrauding donors (KTNV/YouTube). Right: Michele Fiore campaign ad (YouTube).
The Nevada councilwoman and judge once known as "Lady Trump" has vowed to appeal after a speedy wire fraud conviction by a Las Vegas jury.
Michele Fiore, a Pahrump justice of the peace and former member of the Las Vegas City Council, was convicted of six counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud on Thursday. As Law&Crime has previously reported, Fiore was indicted in July and accused of running a scheme to defraud donors to a charity for memorializing a police officer who lost his life in the line of duty, using the money to travel and pay for her daughter's wedding.
Shortly after the verdict, Fiore pledged that her fight wasn't over
"We're still in it," she told reporters, according to local ABC affiliate KTNV. "We're still in the thick of things and my attorney is going to hopefully, you know, apprise you of a lot of situations that you're unaware of."
Fiore suggested that she was muzzled in terms of what she could say in court.
"You were aware yesterday that I wanted to say a few things to the judge and I wasn't allowed to," she said. "These things are very important, and they're very important because it's information the jury didn't have."
Her lawyer, Michael Sanft, signaled his intent to appeal and criticized the speed with which the verdict came back.
"Typically when people are that fast, they've already made up their minds even before the closing arguments so it had to have been some type of testimony that had occurred in the middle of the trial that caused the majority of them to say, oh, that's all we needed," he told the station.
The former Republican gubernatorial candidate, previously referred to as "Lady Trump" for her right-wing policies, faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in a federal correctional facility on each count.
Federal prosecutors say that when Fiore was still a member of the city council, she solicited donations to build the statue honoring Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Officer Alyn Beck, who was killed while on the job on June 18, 2014. Her solicitations allegedly included a promise that "100% of the contributions" would be put toward the creation of the statue.
However, prosecutors say that Fiore "did not use any of the tens of thousands of dollars in charitable donations for the statue of the fallen officers." Instead, she allegedly converted all of the money — more than $70,000 — "for her own personal benefit."
Fiore previously made headlines in 2014, when she went to Cliven Bundy's ranch in Nevada during his militia's standoff with federal agents and referred to Bundy and his men as "freedom fighters," The Guardian reported. While there, she reportedly put out a call for the federal agents "not to obey your superiors when given a direct order to attack your fellow Americans fighting for the freedoms granted to us by our constitution."
A staunchly pro-gun advocate, Fiore also sparked controversy when she posted an eyebrow-raising family Christmas card in December 2015 in which she and her family — including a small child — are all holding firearms.
Her sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 6, 2025 — four years to the day since the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.
Jerry Lambe and Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.
