Michele Fiore, a Republican politician, has been appointed to a Nevada judgeship even though she has no prior legal or judicial experience. She has also previously been accused of obstructing an investigation into her own business and once said it’s okay to point a gun at federal officers.
Fiore will fill a seat on the Pahrump Justice Court in Nye County, located about 65 miles west of Las Vegas, the Associated Press reported. County commissioners unanimously appointed her to the judgeship. She will serve on the court through 2024.
She told commissioners that she would oversee the judicial appointment with “integrity and honesty” because she has “been at the end of the political barrel.”
However, it seems she ended up at the end of that barrel largely due to her own fault.
In 2015, Nevada state regulators revoked the license of her home-health business after she refused to show financial records during an investigation of alleged Medicaid fraud, Wonkette noted. That same year, she made statements against transgender people using changing facilities matching their gender identities.
In 2016, she said it was okay to point a gun at law enforcement officers if they point a gun at you first.
“I would never, ever point my firearm at anyone, including an officer of the law. Unless they pointed their firearm at me,” she said in an interview with Las Vegas TV station KLAS. “Now, once you point your firearm at me, I’m sorry, then it becomes self-defense. So whether you’re a stranger, a bad guy, or an officer, and you point your gun at me and you’re gonna shoot me and I have to decide whether it’s my life or your life, I choose my life.”
The Nevada Association of Public Safety Officers called her statement “utterly irresponsible,” “an embarrassment,” and a demonstration of why she’s unfit to hold national office.
Though Fiore was a member of the Nevada Assembly from 2012 to 2016 and a member of the Las Vegas City Council from 2017 until her appointment into the judgeship, she launched a failed 2022 election bid to become the Nevada State Treasurer and a failed 2016 bid to become a state representative in the U.S. House.