‘Remorseful’ Jenna Ellis makes plea in Ga. election interference case
Ellis is the fourth Donald Trump-related co-defendant to make a plea arrangement.
ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - Jenna Ellis is the latest co-defendant in the Georgia election interference case to make a plea deal with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office.
On Tuesday, Ellis pleaded guilty to one count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings.
Ellis was sentenced to five years of probation for Ellis along with a $5,000 fine; 100 hours of community service; writing an apology letter; and testifying truthfully in trials related to this case.
Prosecutor Daysha Young said in court Tuesday Ellis attended a December 2020 meeting of Georgia state senators with Trump attorney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and with Georgia-based attorney Ray Smith. Ellis “intentionally aided and abetted” the other two as they made false statements to the lawmakers, including that more than 2,500 people convicted of felonies, more than 66,000 people who were under 18 and more than 10,000 dead people voted in the 2020 election in Georgia, Young said.
Ellis also wrote at least two legal memos to then-President Donald Trump and his attorneys advising that then-Vice President Mike Pence should “disregard certified electoral college votes from Georgia and other purportedly “contested” states when Congress met to certify the election results on Jan. 6, 2021, prosecutors have said.
WATCH JENNA ELLIS’ COURT APPEARANCE BELOW
Ellis joins former Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall, and attorneys Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro to reach plea deals in the massive, organized crime-related indictments of Trump and 18 co-defendants.
Ellis read a tearful apology to the court.
“What I did not do, but should have done was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true,” she said. “In the frenetic pace in attempting to raise challenged in several states including Georgia I failed to do my due diligence. If I knew then what I know now I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges. I look back on this whole experiences with deep remorse.”
Ellis, 38, also said she relied on lawyers with much more experience than her and failed to verify that the things they told her were true.
Ellis is also accused of urging state legislators to unlawfully appoint a set of presidential electors loyal to Trump at a hearing in Pennsylvania, and she later appeared with some of those lawmakers and Trump at a meeting on the topic at the White House. The indictment further says she similarly pushed state lawmakers to back false, pro-Trump electors in Georgia as well as Arizona and Michigan.
From the Associated Press:
Before her plea, Ellis, who lives in Florida, was defiant, posting in August on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, “The Democrats and the Fulton County DA are criminalizing the practice of law. I am resolved to trust the Lord.”
But she has been more critical of Trump since then, saying on conservative radio in September that she wouldn’t vote for him again, citing his “malignant, narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.”
Along with Giuliani, Ellis was a leading voice in the Trump campaign’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, appearing frequently on television and conservative media to tell lies about widespread fraud that did not occur and spread misinformation and conspiracy theories.
She was censured in Colorado in March after admitting she made repeated false statements about the 2020 election.
That punishment was due in part to a Nov. 20, 2020, appearance on Newsmax, during which she said, “With all those states (Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia) combined we know that the election was stolen from President Trump, and we can prove that.”
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