Scientology-friendly, gun-toting Nevada politician indicted in charity scam

The last time we visited the nutty world of Michele Fiore, she had put out an eye-catching campaign ad in 2021 announcing she was running for the Republican nomination for Nevada governor, calling herself “Lady Trump” and shooting beer bottles for target practice labeled “vaccine mandates,” “CRT,” and “voter fraud.”

But then she didn’t go through with it and filed instead to run for state treasurer. (She lost.) And we noted at the time that trouble seemed to be brewing for the conservative firebrand…

Local media noted that Fiore’s own house was raided by the FBI in January in a campaign finance investigation, and that a grand jury is involved, but it’s not yet known whether that will result in charges for the city councilwoman.

Well, the second shoe has finally dropped for Fiore, who was indicted this week by that federal grand jury, and is facing 20 years for each of four counts of wire fraud, the Justice Department said in a press release…

According to the indictment, Michele Fiore, 53, of Pahrump, Nevada, a then-Las Vegas city councilwoman, solicited donations to build a statue honoring Las Vegas police officers who were killed in the line of duty. Fiore allegedly promised donors that “100% of the contributions” would be used towards the creation of this statue. As alleged, Fiore did not use any of the tens of thousands of dollars in charitable donations for the statue of the fallen officer and instead converted the money to her personal use. The donations were used to pay her political fundraising bills and rent and were transferred to family members, including to pay for her daughter’s wedding. 

Yikes! That sounds pretty serious. And we’ve been pretty serious about our interest in Fiore over the years.

She first got on our radar back when we were editing Raw Story, which featured a very fun article in 2015 about the fiery Nevada conservative. At that point, while she was still an Assemblywoman, Fiore had gained some national notoriety for suggesting that cancer was a fungus that could be flushed out with warm water.

The Raw Story article chased down some fun facts about Fiore’s earlier dreams of success in Hollywood, a 2006 independent movie she co-wrote and starred in about a woman becoming an unlikely singing star.

Fiore has always been an ambitious woman who seeks the limelight, traits that got her elected numerous times.

After two terms in the state legislature, in 2016 she ran for Congress, but came in third in the Republican primary. She regrouped and won election in 2017 to Las Vegas city council, and she appeared to change focus. Nevada public radio, in particular, seemed taken with her new attention on constituent issues, and told listeners that Fiore was largely misunderstood.

But at the same time, we couldn’t help notice what a cozy relationship she was forming with Scientology.

In a 2018 story at the Bunker, we noted that Fiore was promoting the work of notorious Scientology front group CCHR — Citizens Commission on Human Rights, which is Scientology’s most unhinged propaganda arm, advocating for the outright dismantling of the psychiatric profession and replacing it with Scientology. And Fiore was also a featured speaker at the Las Vegas Scientology “Ideal Org.”

Sure, a politician might shill for the local Scientology church and even advocate for CCHR without being a Scientologist herself. But it was another item that really threw us for a loop: We had found Fiore’s photo featured in a Scientology magazine promoting its private cruise ship, the Freewinds. In the photo, Fiore was frolicking with a dolphin as an advertisement for the sorts of excursions that Freewinds passengers enjoy in the Caribbean.

At first, we thought we might be seeing things. We knew that only very dedicated Scientologists got the chance to set foot on the Freewinds. But soon enough, we found that Fiore’s campaign had posted the same photo in a social media campaign, confirming that yes, it was Fiore who was swimming with dolphins in the photo.

We never got a response from Fiore’s campaign asking for some explanation for what the city councilwoman was doing on Scientology’s barge.

To get some perspective on these varied pieces of evidence, we turned to former Sea Org official Mat Pesch. Here’s what he told us:

She isn’t just interested enough to attend a seminar, she is actually working to promote and spread Scientology programs and LRH ‘tech’ as the solution to common social problems. She is ‘sold’ on Scientology at least to that degree and is working as an agent for the organization. I don’t know what Scientology courses or counseling she has done, but she is a Scientologist in that she knows, applies, and actively works to get others to apply the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard. That’s a Scientologist.

After her failed attempt at state treasurer in 2022, Fiore got elected to justice of the peace in rural Nye County, and we hadn’t heard about her lately.

But now she’s a media star again as her indictment was widely covered, along with her firebrand politics, but nary a mention of her cozy relationship with Scientology.

So we thought we’d put out a reminder about that.

Hip, hip, hooray!

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