Leo Blundo, a former elected commissioner and now Republican Party chairman of Nye County, Nevada, on Tuesday blasted the “political witch hunt” against him and vowed “to be very much like Trump in this. We’re going to fight, fight, fight 100 percent” following a hearing in which pleaded not guilty to stealing nearly half of $500,000 in loans and grants obtained from the federal government in emergency COVID relief funds for his restaurant during the 2020 pandemic, 8 News now reports.
Federal prosecutors, working under Israeli immigrant “Stop the Steal” asshole and 2022 state attorney general election loser-turned-non-Senate confirmed Sigal Chattah, obtained the indictment alleging that Blundo had inflated revenue at his Italian restaurant, Carmelo’s Bistro in Pahrump, to obtain the more than half-million in relief funds and then promptly put $200,000 of it in investment accounts and another $25,000 into crypto. It’s not his first scrape specific to the relief money either as in 2020 the sheriff had cuffed him on probable cause, though the Nevada Attorney General’s office ended up declining to seek charges. Blundo was later fined $4,500 by an ethics panel.
“COVID, you had the Biden administration, you had Steve Sisolak as governor,” Blundo told reporters outside the courthouse, referring to the Democrat unseated by current Republican Governor Joe Lombardo in 2022. “Our friends over at Nye County, everybody had the government heel on the boot, right here, right on the throat of small businesses,” Blundo continued, directing his rage at the two Democrats who are no longer in office and had nothing whatsoever to do with the charges – for which he faces up to 120 years in federal prison. Charges that never would’ve been brought in the first place if Blundo was considered important enough to merit his Holy Orange Allah’s attention and thus protection from the law. All it would’ve taken was a 45-second phone call before – or a pardon issued via Truth Social now – to end Blundo’s nightmare. The man’s pained squeaks of defiance invoke his god’s name and songs, salvation by his hand so effortless and yet Olympus answers not.