Michele Fiore said she was classified a terrorist. Prosecutors say she’s misreading documents.
Federal prosecutors said in a Monday court filing that Michele Fiore’s claim that the government labeled her a domestic terrorist is based on a misreading of FBI documents.
Fiore, 53, of Pahrump, was indicted by a federal grand jury in July on wire fraud and conspiracy charges.
Prosecutors have accused her of raising tens of thousands of dollars for a statue of a fallen Metropolitan Police Department officer, Alyn Beck, but spending it on herself and her daughter’s wedding.
The former Las Vegas City Councilwoman has pleaded not guilty, and her trial is scheduled to start on Sept. 24.
Last week, Fiore’s lawyer, Michael Sanft, said in court documents that the government branded her a domestic terrorist, possibly for her support of the Bundy family in its conflict with the federal government.
But those claims “rest upon a misreading of two FBI documents and are irrelevant to the wire fraud charges the defendant faces,” prosecutors said in a reply filed Monday.
Fiore referred comment to her attorney, who could not immediately be reached.
Prosecutors said they are not aware of any terrorist designation for Fiore and that she seems to be misinterpreting FBI “threat bands.”
Sanft previously said that at some point, the government increased its threat level classification of Fiore from a Department of Homeland Security and FBI level for racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism to one for anti-government and anti-authority violent extremism.
But FBI threat banding for Fiore surveillance operations and Department of Homeland Security threat assessments are different things, prosecutors said. FBI threat banding is connected to the type of investigation, not the level of threat someone poses, according to prosecutors.
“In this case, the investigation into Fiore was opened as a domestic public corruption investigation because Fiore is a public official,” prosecutors said. “Because domestic public corruption cases are a national priority for the FBI, ‘National Threat Band: I’ is listed on the two surveillance documents referred to in Fiore’s response.”
Prosecutors want Fiore to be prohibited from claiming without evidence that the FBI has classified her as a domestic terrorist. They also said the Bundy prosecution — which ended in dismissal due to prosecutorial misconduct — is “completely unrelated to the charges that Fiore now faces.”
They want any evidence or argument about the Bundy prosecution and Fiore’s advocacy for the family to be prohibited.
“It is wholly irrelevant, and any mention of the Bundy prosecution would only serve to confuse the issues, mislead the jury, and waste time,” prosecutors said. “The only reason to introduce such evidence would be for Fiore to seek jury nullification.”
Jury nullification is when jurors believe a defendant is guilty but return a not guilty verdict.
Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BrighamNoble on X.