AP Photo/John Bazemore
On Tuesday, attorney Jenna Ellis pled guilty in the Fulton County, Georgia election fraud case filed against 19 defendants including former President Donald Trump, breaking down in tears as she read a statement to the court that attempted to minimize her role in the scheme and cast blame on other attorneys “with many more years of experience.” Ellis isn’t the first defendant in this case to plead guilty, but she may very well be the most deserving so far of the karmic consequences from her years of deceitful, violence-provoking behavior.
In August, Ellis was among the 19 defendants (including former New York City Mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and several lawyers who have represented Trump and his campaign, including Kenneth Chesebro, Sidney Powell, and John Eastman) charged in a 41-count, 98-page indictment for their alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.
Former Georgia bail bondsman Scott Hall pled guilty in late September, followed by attorneys Powell and Chesebro last week. These successive guilty
Ellis put on quite the performance in court Tuesday, beginning by introducing herself “as an attorney who is also a Christian,” and claiming that she took her responsibilities as an attorney “very seriously” and “endeavor[ed] to be a person of sound moral and ethical character in all of my dealings.”
“I relied on others, including lawyers with many more years of experience than I to provide me with true and reliable information, especially since my role involved speaking to the media and to legislators in various states,” said Ellis, before admitting that she failed to “make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true,” and “failed to do my due diligence” during the “frenetic pace” of attempting to challenge the election.
“If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges,” she continued, claiming she “look[ed] back on this whole experience with deep remorse.”
What a steaming pile
Attorneys are regulated by not just state and federal laws, but also the bar associations for each jurisdiction in which they are admitted. While each bar’s rules vary somewhat from state to state, they are based on the Model Rules of Professional Conduct promulgated by the American Bar Association, and all are very clear about attorneys’ duties to use due diligence and be honest in their representations in court and to the public. Put simply, attorneys are not allowed to lie or make misrepresentations as part of their advocacy for their clients.
To the best of my knowledge, there is not a single state bar that has an exception for an attorney’s obligations to be honest because they’re representing a former president or are under pressure from the “frenetic pace” of trying to challenge an election, and being a rookie lawyer or a less-experienced member of a legal team is likewise no excuse. An attorney who does not possess the skills and experience needed to adequately handle a case is ethically obligated to turn down the representation. Ellis’ prior gig as a local prosecutor handling traffic court cases in an agricultural county in Colorado doesn’t suggest she was up to the task of taking on the high-pressure, complex constitutional arguments involved in a presidential election challenge, but the obligation to not accept a case for which she was unqualified was on her
And let’s keep in mind, Ellis was not just saying that Trump deserved his day in court or calling for investigations to find evidence; she was repeatedly going on television programs, podcasts, radio shows, etc. to declare that there absolutely was evidence of election fraud and that it was sufficient to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.
For example, on Nov. 23, 2020, Ellis told MSNBC’s Ari Melber that the “truth” was that “the election was stolen and President Trump won by a landslide.”
Ellis claimed that Trump’s legal team had “thousands of pages of witness affidavits from six states that are talking about election official fraud,” and bristled when Melber pointed out — accurately — that courts had already tossed out dozens of lawsuits trying to challenge the election.
In a Fox Business interview with Maria Bartiromo on Dec. 4, 2020, Ellis pushed a video of Georgia election workers moving “suitcases of ballots” from under a table to claim it was an “absolutely shocking” “smoking gun” video — despite the fact that Republican elections officials in Georgia had already reviewed and thoroughly debunked the claims about that video.
In the end, by the time Congress was voting on the Electoral College certification on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump and his allies had filed and lost over sixty lawsuits in state and federal courts across
As far as these “thousands of pages” of affidavits Ellis claimed proved the election was “stolen,” that quickly fell apart as soon as anyone actually read their contents. A Washington Post analysis found that what was in these affidavits was “far less” than what Trump’s team promised, with a “dead” voter who “turned out to be alive,” witnesses who admitted they were unsure of the facts, military voters who were wrongfully accused of illegally voting “out of state,” and complaints about actions by poll workers that were either actually standard procedure that the witness misinterpreted or nothing that could have actually changed a ballot’s results.
For example, one poll observer complained “every ballot I observed was cast for Joe Biden” — in Detroit, a longtime staunchly Democratic metropolis where Biden ended up winning 94 percent of the vote in 2020.
All in all, the entire cumulative total of “evidence” submitted with all of the lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies, even if viewed in the light most favorable for Trump, would not have been enough to overturn the election results in one state, much less the multiple states Trump would have had to flip in order to overtake Biden’s Electoral College votes.
For Ellis to go on television and
Ellis continued to make baseless claims the 2020 election was stolen and to publicly voice support for the tin-foil hatted nonsense spouted by other Trump attorneys like Giuliani and Powell, well after the lawsuits were all tossed out, the Electoral College votes were certified, and Biden was sworn into office.
She also created a memo she sent to Meadows claiming that then-Vice President Mike Pence could overturn the election results — something that Pence absolutely did not have the legal power to do, and yet again another example of Ellis making declarations that were unfounded in either law or fact.
It must not be forgotten that these election lies promoted by Ellis and other Trump attorneys didn’t just waste the time and money of dozens upon dozens of
Georgia election workers who were wrongfully accused of committing fraud faced such intense harassment and death threats that they had to flee their homes — and, most infamously, Trump supporters who believed the election lies protested at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 before violently knocking down barricades, assaulting police officers, and storming through the hallways in an attempt to disrupt the Electoral College certification. Many of those Jan. 6 defendants have had their lives completely derailed: marriages ended, jobs lost, not to mention felony prison sentences. Hundreds of police officers were wounded, some with permanently disabling, career-ending injuries, and some committed suicide in the aftermath.
Ellis has also demonstrated an astonishing lack of loyalty by initially being a vociferous critic of Trump in the first part of the 2016 election cycle, only to then become an aggressive spokesperson for his election lies, and then flip again as she tried to glom onto Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) floundering presidential campaign.
There does seem to be a very strong possibility that Ellis’ newfound DeSantis fandom arises not because she was won over by his oh-so-charming personality, but because she’s no longer on the Trump payroll. Ellis was left to fend for herself financially as she was subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 House Select Committee and then indicted in Georgia, complaining about it on The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter.
Ellis ended
As MAGA world learns that Ellis was not actually required to go as far as she did in her in-court comments — she only had to apologize in writing to the people of Georgia and admit to promoting specific false claims, not make any verbal statement in court at all — that fury seems likely to grow.
As many of Ellis’ critics have pointed out, she has been in the habit over the past few years of mocking her critics with an exhortation to “Cry more” (a search of her tweets brings up scores of examples).
So for this person who took an oath as an attorney, who professes to be a devout Christian and patriotic American, but who nevertheless personally promoted a stunning series of misrepresentations, conspiratorial nonsense, and flat-out lies to undermine faith in our elections, I can think of no better advice for her now than “Cry more.”