检察官称，这是他们见过的最为肆无忌惮的欺诈行为之一。2024年秋季，陪审团仅用了不到两小时便裁定：共和党人米歇尔·菲奥雷犯有欺诈罪。这位曾任拉斯维加斯市议员的法官以修建两座阵亡警员纪念雕像为由募集捐款，却将所得资金用于自己的整容手术、房租支付以及女儿的婚礼。
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.
“许多人都捐了款，包括州长在内，”密切跟踪报道此案的《内华达独立报》编辑乔恩·拉尔斯顿说道，“庭审中的证据确凿表明，她募集到的资金根本未用于修建雕像。”
“The evidence at the trial was overwhelming that the money she raised never went to the statue.”
不过，因推崇特朗普而被称为“特朗普女士”的菲奥雷还有后手可出。她声称自己遭到了联邦调查局、司法部和媒体的陷害，还表示自己曾向白宫提交了一份长达18页的文件以证明自己的清白。
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.
去年4月，在法官尚未作出量刑判决之际，唐纳德·特朗普总统便宣布对菲奥雷予以完全赦免。他始终未解释此举的原因。
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.
在回复MS NOW的声明中，白宫并未否认菲奥雷犯有欺诈捐款者的罪行。
He has never explained why.
“米歇尔·菲奥雷曾是共和党全国委员会委员，也是内华达州的民选官员。她以直言不讳且特立独行的个性而声名远扬，”一位白宫官员写道。“作为特朗普总统的支持者，她还是内华达州议会首位女性共和党多数党领袖。由于其保守立场鲜明，她遭到针对，还经历了政府调查与起诉。她虽被判犯有电信欺诈罪，但如今获得了赦免。”
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.
“今年她的连任竞选完全以‘自己是深层政府的迫害受害者’以及‘唐纳德·特朗普始终支持自己’为卖点。”不过，对于一直关注她政治生涯的人来说，菲奥雷获得赦免着实令人意外。菲奥雷出生于布鲁克林，在内华达州政坛被视为极端人物：2015年，她曾扬言要“亲手朝叙利亚难民的脑袋开枪”，此事曾登上全国新闻头条。她还曾寄出一张家庭圣诞贺卡，上面几代家庭成员——包括一个小孩——都手持枪支。
“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.”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.
后来菲奥雷对有关叙利亚难民的言论作出解释，她告诉美联社自己当时指的是恐怖分子。不过她也强调，自己依然不希望叙利亚难民进入本州。
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.
她曾称癌症是一种可以用小苏打清除的真菌；2016年，她还为自己支持克莱文·邦迪的立场辩护。邦迪是一名极右翼生存主义者，曾在2014年策划了与联邦执法人员的武装对峙事件。
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.
“你不可能靠枪炮来实施统治，还指望美国民众不会用枪来反抗，”菲奥雷说道。2021年，她竞选内华达州州长。
“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.
她的竞选广告中，她身着红色连衣裙、腰间别着枪，从卡车上爬下来。她以“特朗普女士”自诩，朝代表疫苗强制令、批判性种族理论以及选举舞弊的瓶子开枪。
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.
菲奥雷拒绝了MS NOW的采访请求，但她的律师克里斯汀·威尔德维尔特为此次赦免辩护称，他们已向司法部提交了有关菲奥雷案的相关材料。
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.
“白宫对米歇尔的审查工作做得极为细致，”她说，“这次赦免完全合理，也是她应得的。”获得赦免后，菲奥雷确实出席了几档当地媒体的节目，包括8 News Now以及汤姆·莱蒂齐亚主持的《The Middle Ground》节目。
“The White House did an extremely thorough job vetting Michele,” she said. “This was a completely valid pardon. It was a well-deserved pardon.”
特朗普的赦免让菲奥雷免于入狱，却未能挽救她的政治与司法生涯。2024年她被判有罪时正担任治安法官，内华达州司法纪律委员会随即暂停了她的职务。尽管获得了赦免，法院依然维持了这一处罚决定。
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.
不过菲奥雷并未就此认输。今年年初，她竞选连任帕伦普镇的治安法官，而该地是共和党的坚定大本营。
But Fiore wasn’t going out quietly, and earlier this year, she ran to retain her seat in Pahrump, a conservative Republican stronghold. But in that deep-red Nevada county claiming to be closely associated with Trump didn’t help Fiore after all.
然而，在这个与特朗普关系密切的保守派选区，这一优势最终也未能帮到菲奥雷。
“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.
“我认为包括我在内的很多人都对她在选举中的糟糕表现感到意外。她在四位候选人中仅排第三，差距相当明显，”拉尔斯顿说道。
The pardon of Fiore was one of a string of grants of clemency he has issued to Republican politicians convicted of fraud or corruption.
对菲奥雷的赦免只是特朗普对多名因欺诈或腐败罪定罪的共和党政客实施赦免的系列举措之一。这些人包括因受贿被判10年监禁的弗吉尼亚州警长斯科特·詹金斯、因税务欺诈定罪的前纽约国会议员迈克尔·格里姆，以及承认腐败罪行的康涅狄格州前州长约翰·罗兰德。
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.
谈及对菲奥雷的赦免，拉尔斯顿指出：“我认为这一举动传递出的信号是：赦免完全是出于政治考量，与事实无关；特朗普始终将对自己的忠诚置于一切之上，甚至凌驾于犯罪事实之上。”
“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.
“我猜特朗普本人对案件细节一无所知，只是因为米歇尔·菲奥雷自他参选以来就一直是他最响亮、最坚定的支持者，所以出于政治上的忠诚与私交才给予了她赦免，”他补充道。
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.
获得赦免后，她制作了一部共14集的YouTube系列节目，名为《菲奥雷档案——打破既定叙事》。在节目中，她坚称自己无罪，并提出了一系列毫无事实依据的指控。
“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.
“你们想了解真相吗？想知道陪审团是如何作出裁决的吗？司法部和联邦调查局对他们撒了谎，而我提供的所有辩护证词也全都被排除在外，”她在其中一集中说道。
“I’ve never seen anything like it, and I doubt anything like it has ever happened in the history of the country,” Ralston said.
正如MS NOW在本系列报道中所指出的那样，特朗普对赦免权的运用程度远超现代历史上的任何一位总统：他抛开了以往的规则，完全无视法官与陪审团的裁决结果。
“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.”
“我从未见过这种情况，甚至怀疑美国历史上是否曾发生过类似事件，”拉尔斯顿说道。“身为国家最高领导人，他竟利用赦免权来帮助那些对他忠心耿耿的朋友、政治追随者以及受雇为他争取赦免的律师，全然不顾这些人是否真的配得上赦免。”多年来，两党总统都曾因一些存疑的赦免决定而遭到批评。
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. The post‘Lady Trump’ was convicted for fraud and then pardoned by the president.
“但如今这种大规模、全方位地动用赦免权来惠及那些唯一特点就是对特朗普忠心耿耿的人，实在令人震惊，”拉尔斯顿补充道。
The White House didn’t say why.