Trump’s pardon of Michele Fiore breaks with tradition, experts say
Experts say that people who receive presidential pardons generally are remorseful for their crimes, have served their sentences and, if they are controversial, are not granted clemency until the president is near the end of his term and doesn’t have much to lose.
President Donald Trump’s full and unconditional pardon of Nevada politician Michele Fiore on April 23 broke with all of those traditions.
Fiore, a former Las Vegas councilwoman, was found guilty of conspiracy and wire fraud charges by a federal jury in October. Federal prosecutors said she raised tens of thousands of dollars for a statue honoring Metropolitan Police Department officer Alyn Beck, who was shot and killed with his partner in 2014.
The statue was built, but it was paid for by developer Olympia Companies, according to trial testimony. Fiore spent the donations on personal expenses: rent, plastic surgery and her daughter’s wedding, prosecutors said.
Fiore, who was pardoned before she could be sentenced on May 14, has remained defiant, claiming in a statement after her pardon that she “endured relentless persecution by a federal machine determined to break” her.
“Today, I stand before you — not just as a free woman, but as a vindicated soul whose prayers were heard, whose faith held firm, and whose truth could not be buried by injustice,” she wrote.
In a statement, the White House said, “Due to her outspoken conservative views, she became a target and incurred government investigation and prosecution.”
The statement also noted that Fiore is “a supporter of President Trump.”
For a Trump pardon, said Michigan State University law professor Brian Kalt, “the main criterion seems to be someone is a supporter and if he can sort of identify with them as the victim of a politically motivated prosecution. Whether they were actually guilty or not is a separate matter.”
Fiore’s pardon stood out to Mark Osler, a University of St. Thomas law professor and advocate for changes to the clemency process.
“The Fiore pardon is very unusual in the totality of the way clemency has been used in American history, because it’s for such an overtly political figure and because of the lack of remorse and because it’s done before sentencing,” he said.
Defense attorney Paola Armeni, who represents Fiore, declined a request for an interview with Fiore.
But when asked in a text message about the process she went through to get a pardon, Fiore replied: “It’ll be in my book.”
Fiore’s backers
Attorney Kristina Wildeveld, who advocated for Fiore’s pardon, also declined an interview request for this story.
Wildeveld previously said she filed a petition with the Department of Justice in January, raising issues that included vindictive prosecution claims.
She denied that anything was unusual about the case or that Fiore’s political connections were the basis for the pardon.
“The normal process took place,” she said.
But Fiore apparently had the support of other Trump allies.
Roger Stone, a veteran Republican operative who also received a pardon from Trump, described himself as “a full-throated advocate for executive clemency” in Fiore’s case when he hosted her on his radio show after her pardon.
“Thank you so much for being an advocate. I know you guys are close,” Fiore replied, apparently referring to Stone and Trump.
Conservative media personality Wayne Allyn Root said in a post on social media platform X that he also requested that Trump pardon Fiore.
Root said in a phone interview that he sent a note to the president asking him to read a note from Fiore and make a decision. Fiore has been a friend of his for 20 years and told him she was innocent and believed she was railroaded, he said.
“I’m just a good friend to people,” he said. “Whenever friends come to me and ask for help, I help them.”
Others have distanced themselves.
Interim Nevada U.S. Attorney Sigal Chattah, who accompanied Fiore to court during her criminal case, said she was not involved in getting Fiore a pardon.
“We haven’t talked in a while,” she said.
Asked why, Chattah replied: “It’s none of your business.”
Pardon history
The president’s power to grant pardons stems from the U.S. Constitution.
“He shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment,” Article II of the Constitution says.
The ability to grant pardons is “the most sort of monarchical” of a president’s powers, Kalt said. “He just says it, and it happens.”
Pardons undo convictions and restore rights, said Osler, including the right to possess firearms and the right to vote, but admitting guilt is usually part of the basis for seeking a pardon.
“A pardon in the great majority of cases is about a person’s rehabilitation after serving the sentence,” Osler said. “And so it’s about change, not about the crime having not been committed.”
It is rare for a pardon to be granted before sentencing, he said.
Although the president holds the pardon power, the Department of Justice has been responsible for reviewing pardon applications since the 19th century, according to the department’s website.
The federal government developed an intricate process to assess pardon requests.
Margaret Love, who served as U.S. pardon attorney from 1990 to 1997, said pardon seekers filed applications with the pardon attorney, whose office would investigate. In the case of a full pardon, that meant an FBI background investigation, consultation with the prosecutor and the sentencing judge, and the preparation of a report about the case. The report would be sent through the Justice Department chain of command and then to the White House with a recommendation to issue or deny a pardon.
Love said she has advocated for the president to remove the pardon process from the Justice Department and make it his own.
But, she said, “I didn’t intend him to do something like this president has done because I think it’s right for a process to be fairly accessible to ordinary people.”
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s pardon process
Under Trump, Osler said, successful pardon seekers appear to be dealing directly with the White House on a larger scale than previously, when the Justice Department processed applications.
Fiore has said her case was examined by the White House.
“This pardon wasn’t handed to me without the White House attorneys literally doing homework and their investigation on everything that I’ve been through for a decade and this new case,” Fiore said in a video interview with political organization Veterans In Politics.
Wildeveld emailed and called every day, Fiore said.
Love said that in the past, someone occasionally lobbied the White House directly for a pardon, “but usually the White House relied upon the Justice Department to make recommendations.”
She said the process currently “seems to be subject to the personal inclinations of the president.”
The White House did not respond to questions about the current pardon process.
The Trump administration’s handling of pardons “changes a hundred years of precedent in terms of process,” Osler said. “It removes objectivity. You had within the pardon attorney’s office dedicated and relatively experienced staff to analyze cases, and there doesn’t seem to be a body that’s doing that.”
Trump’s pardons are “completely arbitrary” and based on whom the recipients know, said retired Nevada Federal Public Defender Franny Forsman.
“There are many, many other people who are more deserving of a pardon than Michele Fiore,” she said. “It’s unfair that it’s people with connections and privilege who are considered.”
But Kalt said the fact that Trump pardoned Fiore early in his presidency “actually gives Trump’s actions more legitimacy because he’s still politically accountable.” Unlike other presidents, he said, Trump has not waited to grant controversial pardons.
On his first day in office, he pardoned more than 1,500 defendants involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol after Joe Biden won the 2020 election.
Kalt compared Trump’s controversial pardons to Biden’s, which came as he was about to leave office. Biden gave pardons to his siblings, their spouses and his son Hunter. He also pardoned retired Gen. Mark Milley, Dr. Anthony Fauci and members of the committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack.
“I don’t think you can criticize Trump for his pardons without mentioning Biden pardoning his own family, (which) he did at the end there, and some of his allies in Congress that he thought might need protection from Trump,” he said.
Most of those who received the controversial end-of-term pardons from Biden had not been charged with any crimes.
“Biden’s pardons at the end were sort of setting the stage,” Kalt added. “I think one of the reasons he got as much criticism for it as he did was just that it sort of greenlights Trump to do something just like that.”
Potential for lingering consequences
Although the pardon ensures that Fiore will not be sentenced to prison for the offenses she was found guilty of committing, she may still face consequences at the state level.
Fiore could continue to be suspended from her position as a Pahrump justice of the peace by the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline, which ended a Friday hearing without making a decision.
The judicial discipline body has indicated that if it finds that the pardon voids its prior suspension dating back to the aftermath of her federal indictment, it will decide whether the underlying allegations against Fiore make her “a substantial threat of serious harm to the public or to the administration of justice.”
Defense attorney Armeni said in the Friday hearing that a full pardon “releases the punishment and blots out the existence of guilt,” quoting an 1866 U.S. Supreme Court decision.
She also has argued that the commission cannot police allegations of misconduct that date back to before someone becomes a judge. Fiore’s federal case was based on her actions when she was a councilwoman.
But if the board bases discipline on Fiore’s actions and has investigated the fraud or other acts, the pardon wouldn’t affect that investigation, Osler said.
Fiore has suggested she could end up on the federal bench.
“Trust me, sister, you have just been empowered,” Stone said to Fiore on his show, adding, “God forbid for your enemies that you choose to run for elective office again because if you do, you will win.”
Fiore replied: “My future will be a judge, whether it be my justice of the peace (seat) here in Pahrump or eventually a federal judge after I finish law school and take the bar, but I do not want to run for anything anymore.”
Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BrighamNoble on X. The Associated Press contributed to this report.