Convicted GOP grifter pardoned by convicted GOP grifter

Convicted grifter Michele Fiore getting pardoned by fellow convicted grifter Donald Trump reflects a casual disregard for law enforcement, and a blithe disrespect for one former law enforcement official in particular: Nevada’s Republican governor.

Money Fiore raised to build a statue honoring a police officer killed in the line of duty was reportedly spent on plastic surgery and other expenses incurred in the course of the care and feeding of Michele Fiore.

Gov. Joe Lombardo testified at Fiore’s trial as a self-described “victim” of Fiore’s grift. While sheriff running for reelection, Lombardo’s campaign contributed $5,000 to Fiore’s purported memorial effort in 2019.

Lombardo is declining to comment on Fiore’s pardon. That’s too bad, because it would be fun to watch him yet again try to thread that needle between expressing mild non-approval of some bat guano thing Trump did or said yet not get browbeaten by some Trump flunky as a result.

Nevada also has a right to know if Lombardo, the governor after all, is in the loop. Was he informed about Fiore’s pardon beforehand, and if so, who informed him? Someone from the White House? A gloating Fiore herself? Interim U.S. attorney for Nevada (and Fiore’s fellow full-on MAGAwhackadoodle kindred spirit) Sigal Chattah?

Or did Lombardo find out about it at the same time as everybody else?

When Fiore was convicted in October, noting how Fiore wears her weapons worship on her sleeve, I joked in the Daily Current newsletter that “Maybe her beloved idol Trump will pardon her and appoint her director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.”

Well, we’re halfway there.

In a statement dripping with pathetic melodrama and theatrical piety, Fiore said for now she’ll be returning to a different job for which she is woefully unfit on countless levels and to which she never should have been appointed in the first place, Nye County’s justice of the peace in Pahrump. But it’s not clear if that’s going to happen.

And frankly, now that Trump, during a break from his busy schedule of wrecking the global economy and imposing misery and despair on untold millions, gave her brand as a Trumpy grifter extraordinaire a boost, Fiore can probably land, if not the ATF job, at least a position that’s both more high-high profile and better-paying.

Maybe Chattah is staffing up the U.S. attorney’s office in Nevada to launch lawfare and retribution against people who have displeased Michele Fiore, and will name Fiore special DOJ agent in charge? Maybe Chattah’s office will buy Fiore an armored Cybertruck!

Meanwhile, to reiterate, all this is demeaning to Lombardo, and makes him look snubbed and small. And to think just earlier this month Lombardo went to such great pains to showcase his capacity for MAGAliciously crude and hateful buffoonery. As the master and model of the genre used to always say: Sad.

A version of this commentary was originally published in the Daily Current newsletter, which is free and which you can subscribe to here.