‘Very, Very Ominous’: CNN Legal Analyst Says Jenna Ellis Guilty Plea ‘Pulls the Rug’ Out From Under Trump In Election Cases
CNN on Tuesday morning broke the news that former Trump election lawyer Jenna Ellis pled guilty to charges related to the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia. The network quickly brought on legal analyst Norm Eisen to help explain the impact of the news on former President Donald Trump’s state and federal election cases.
CNN justice correspondent Jessica Schneider first finished her report and noted that “Ellis seems to have a lot of anger toward Donald Trump.”
“And the question is, how will that anger that she’s shown over social media transpire when she’s asked to give testimony and work with the prosecutors here in this ongoing case against the former president and all of those other defendants who are still facing those charges here,” Schneider concluded.
“Yeah, you would think it does increase the legal jeopardy for sure,” replied anchor John Berman, adding:
Now, the fourth of the co-defendants in the Fulton County case to enter into a plea agreement. Jeff, stand by for one minute. I want to bring back Ambassador Norm Eisen here. Norm, as we said, four co-defendants have now entered into plea deals. She and Ellis agreed to plead guilty to one count of aiding and abetting false statements in writing. Again, this has to do with statements she made alongside Rudy Giuliani in a Georgia hearing in December of 2020. None of the co-defendants has pleaded guilty to the RICO or racketeering charge yet, though.
“So how do any or do they any of these guilty pleas perhaps impact that which is the maybe the bigger of all the charges here?” Berman asked Eisen.
“John, They enable prosecutors, the guilty pleas do, they enable prosecutors to prove up the RICO charges against the most senior individuals who have been charged. Of course, Mr. Giuliani, and above all, the former president,” Eisen replied, adding:
And that works in a variety of ways. You need to prove to predicate acts two of the enumerated criminal acts under that RICO statute as one of the elements of proof, for example.
Well, now you’re going to have Mr. Chesebro, Ms. Powell, Jenna Ellis, come in, and that streamlines the proof. Five months had been set aside for the Chesebro at trial. Chesebro, until trial because of that painstaking process. Now we can move much more quickly. And when you look at Ms. Ellis’s tearful presentation, admitting that these falsehoods that Donald Trump still continues to push on the campaign trail were lies that she was misled. That’s going to be very powerful for a jury.
His defense stands on two legs in Georgia and federally, John. One is that he actually won the election and the other is that’s the factual predicate and the other is the legal argument. Therefore, I have the right to challenge it in the way that I did. Well, Ms. Ellis, Ms. Powell, they were purveyors of those falsehoods about him winning. They backed down. They pled guilty. Mr. Chesebro was a main architect of the legal theory. He’s backed down. So it pulls the rug out from under Donald Trump’s defense.
This is very, very ominous for him as a state and federal criminal defendant. Same for Giuliani.
Watch the full clip above via CNN.
