admin
A newly elected Democrat county commissioner in Oregon, Melissa Fireside, has reportedly gone on the run after being indicted on multiple felony theft and forgery charges tied to an alleged $30,000 scam against an elderly man. State investigators say she may have fled the country with her nine-year-old son while awaiting a December trial, prompting a motion from the Oregon Department of Justice to revoke her conditional release. This is the sort of lawlessness that makes ordinary Americans wonder whether the political class plays by a different set of rules.
Court documents laid out a brazen scheme: prosecutors allege Fireside accessed the 83-year-old victim’s accounts during a visit to his assisted living facility, coached him to reset his online banking, and then pulled funds out of his account. Authorities say some $29,000 went to repay a loan tied to another elected official while $1,000 landed in Fireside’s own account, and that forgery and computer-crime counts followed. The details read like a cheap crime novel, but this was real life, and the alleged victim was a vulnerable retiree who deserved better than to be preyed upon.
When news broke that she no longer lived at her listed address and could not be located, the Oregon DOJ moved quickly to ask a judge to strip her of the conditional release that had allowed her to remain free pending trial. Officials say they’re coordinating with federal partners to find Fireside and determine whether she crossed a border with her child, and the state has made clear its top priority is the boy’s safety while it seeks to bring his mother to justice. Americans rightly expect that no one, no matter how well connected or politically fashionable, should be able to slip away from accountability.
This case is a sharp, ugly reminder of what happens when political tribes protect their own and the system grows soft on elites who break the law. Fireside was elected only last November after unseating a Republican incumbent, and within months she was under indictment and then allegedly vanished — a sequence that should make voters across the spectrum furious. Conservatives understand that protecting the vulnerable and enforcing the law are not partisan gestures; they are the foundation of any decent society.
Now is the time for tough, transparent action: find the child, secure his welfare, and use every legal tool to return this woman to Oregon courts so the jury can decide the facts. Prosecutors and the attorney general are right to stress they will work with law enforcement partners to ensure she cannot evade trial simply because she wore a campaign button. If our institutions mean anything, they must act swiftly to show that privilege and politics do not buy freedom from consequences.
