Jenna Ellis, one in every of former President Donald Trump’s ex-attorneys charged within the Georgia election interference case, pleaded guilty Tuesday to at least one depend of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. Ellis is the third former Trump legal professional to plead responsible within the case, with attorneys Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro pleading responsible final week.
Ellis pleaded responsible as a part of a plea deal, which diminished her prices from two felony counts to at least one. The plea deal additionally required Ellis to agree that she “aided and abetted” fellow co-defendants Rudy Giuliani and Ray Stallings Smith III in making false statements to the Georgia Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, together with claims that over 2,500 individuals who have been discovered responsible of felonies illegally voted within the state in the course of the 2020 presidential election, over 66,000 underage folks voted and over 10,000 useless folks voted.
Through the plea listening to, Ellis tearfully expressed regret for her involvement in spreading election falsehoods, stating:
As an legal professional who can be a Christian, I take my obligations as a lawyer very critically and I endeavor to be an individual of sound ethical and moral character in all of my dealings…I relied on others together with attorneys with many extra years of expertise than I to offer me with true and dependable data, particularly as a result of my position concerned talking to the media and to legislators in numerous states. What I didn’t do and may have accomplished was to ensure the details that different attorneys alleged to be true have been the truth is true….If I knew then what I do know now, I might have declined to characterize Donald Trump in these post-election challenges. I look again on this entire expertise with deep regret.
Ellis is the former Deputy District Attorney for Weld County, Colorado, the place she principally dealt with minor legal proceedings. She then turned a authorized and political commentator in 2018. Regardless of claims that she was a member of Trump’s authorized “elite strike power workforce,” she has since claimed that her position in difficult the 2020 presidential election on behalf of Trump was primarily public-facing. Whereas Ellis didn’t signal onto nearly all of Trump’s 2020 election challenges as an legal professional, she did converse at a number of press conferences and to a number of state legislatures, together with the Georgia legislature. She proclaimed her innocence in September, however has since shunned mentioning her authorized troubles publicly outdoors of the courtroom. Ellis has additionally been censured in Colorado for making false 2020 election fraud claims.
Georgia Decide Scott McAfee has not but set a trial date for the remaining defendants within the Georgia case, together with Trump himself.
