Mrs. Chris Hicks: Prosecutor, Political Surrogate, or Just Another Keyboard Warrior?
One of our eagle-eyed readers caught this Facebook dust up and sent to us. The posts have been removed and our reader didn’t capture the times these posts went online.
In Washoe County, where optics often masquerade as ethics and silence is considered leadership, one prosecutor just couldn’t keep her opinions to herself—and the implications are more than just awkward.
Nicole Hicks, a prosecutor in the Washoe County District Attorney’s Office, recently found herself in a public social media dust-up with attorney Zelalem Bogale, the presumptive Democratic nominee for District Attorney. The topic? Chris Hicks—her husband and current DA—and his controversial charging decisions in the Reno High School mini-riot that many in the community disagree with.
So let’s stop right there and unpack the bizarre, uncomfortable, and frankly could we consider this unethical theater unfolding here.
In the Reno High case, the students involved allegedly painted a swastika. Yet somehow, according to Chris Hicks’ office, that wasn’t hate-motivated enough to warrant hate crime charges. This, naturally, has sparked outrage and debate.
Picon ponders why a prosecutor is commenting publicly on an open, politically sensitive case? Let’s be clear, Nicole Hicks isn’t just some random spouse defending her man. She is a sworn prosecutor in the same office. That means her comments aren’t just “opinions”—they carry weight, they signal institutional posture, and they risk violating the professional code of conduct that governs every attorney in the state.
Attorneys—and especially prosecutors—are bound by rules of professional responsibility, including avoiding public commentary that could prejudice proceedings or appear as official statements from the office. In other words, even if she’s not the one who signed the charging sheet, she works for the same guy whose decision she’s publicly defending.
Did Nicole Hicks post on a lunch break? On her couch after work? Or while technically on the taxpayers’ dime? If she’s using her government-paid time to wage Facebook wars on behalf of her husband’s political future, someone might want to file a public records request. But remember Chris Hicks is the guy who tasked his team to deny public record requests left and right. The public deserves to know whether their tax dollars are funding political surrogacy under the guise of public service.
Let’s not kid ourselves. When a spouse who works in the office starts defending the elected DA’s decisions in a race where he’s under fire from a challenger, that’s not just “defending her husband”—that’s campaigning. If Nicole Hicks wants to be her husband’s official political operative, she should take a leave of absence and do so out in the open.
Otherwise, it starts to look like the DA’s office is doubling as campaign HQ, which is—let’s be polite here—highly problematic. Picon has already questioned how Hicks is using his Public information Officer to his campaign’s benefit. Remember the PIO, is a position the taxpayers are paying for - this is a county employee.
And finally, the $24 Million Question - why did Nicole Hicks delete the posts? Nothing screams “I said something I shouldn’t have” quite like a deleted post. If Nicole Hicks stood by her words, they’d still be up. But they vanished faster than Washoe County ethics during an election year.
Post comments made as part of Hicks and Bogale exchange.
Did someone in the DA’s office tell her to take them down? Did she realize she crossed a line? Or is this just damage control for a campaign that’s looking shaky?
Washoe County residents should be asking more than just what Chris Hicks thinks about swastikas. They should be asking what it means when a prosecutor starts acting like a press secretary, when public funds might be used for private defense, and when ethical lines blur to the point of invisibility.
Because in the end, justice isn’t just about the cases you prosecute—it’s also about the integrity of those who do the prosecuting.