Lawyer Jenna Ellis, who just pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings, may in her own way be the archetypal Donald Trump acolyte: a faintly hucksterish opportunist from the periphery of conservative and evangelical politics raised to prominence by her association with the former US president, only to be disgraced and humiliated by it.
Ellis is a former assistant district attorney in Weld County, Colorado, who self-published books on Christian interpretations of the US constitution and dubiously affixed “professor” to her title in media appearances she started making with increasing regularity after the DA fired her in 2013 for “mistakes”. In 2015 and 2016 those appearances were largely dedicated to excoriating then-candidate Trump.
Trump, according to that iteration of Ellis, was “boorish and arrogant”, an “idiot” and a “bully”.
“Why should we rest our highest office in America on a man who fundamentally goes back and forth and really cannot be trusted to be consistent or accurate in anything?” Ellis asked during an April 2016 radio appearance.
At the same time, she made a series of Facebook posts noting Trump’s “disgusting” comments about women (one of the few such posts she seems to have forgotten to delete), arguing he was not a “real Christian”, and that his values were “not American”.
She shared articles that called Trump an “American fascist” and raged elsewhere that he was an “unethical, corrupt, lying, criminal, dirtbag”. And just to show the past is a foreign country, she referred to him as “Drumpf”, back when we were convincing ourselves that might influence things.
Around the time Trump defied the odds and the polls to win, Ellis coincidentally began to rethink her stance. Across 2017 and 2018 she regularly appeared on Fox, now apparently a “constitutional law attorney” offering Trump her full-throated support. By November 2019, it had got her a job as Trump’s campaign adviser, and almost exactly a year later she was beside former Trump lawyers and co-defendants Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell at a press conference presenting false evidence of election fraud and baseless accusations of voter suppression. Her mugshot, one of 18 taken by Fulton County, stood out as she was the only one of the accused to sport a broad grin.
Ellis appears now to have had another change of heart. Earlier this year she was censured by a Colorado judge and signed a legal acknowledgement that “she made a number of public statements about the November 2020 presidential election that were false” with a “reckless state of mind” and with “a selfish motive”.
On Tuesday, pleading guilty in return for a lesser charge, she tearfully declared:
In the frenetic pace of attempting to raise challenges to the election 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 experience with deep remorse.
By the time of her guilty plea, she had raised more than US$200,000 from supporters to fight the case.
Ellis is the third member of Trump’s legal team, and fourth defendant overall, to flip on him. Sidney Powell — possibly the loudest exponent of the “stop the steal” movement to become a fixture on a supine Fox News — and, possibly most significantly, “captain of the legal team” Kenneth Chesebro both took plea deals, meaning reduced charges in return for testimony against their co-defendants. The more high-profile people flip, the closer the walls close in on figures like Trump and Rudy Giuliani.
So it may be true to say — to quote a December 2015 Facebook post still unaccountably available on Ellis’ public page — we are in the last days. One way or another.
Will Donald Trump’s legal strife stop him from securing the Republican nomination — or even a second term? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
