Jenna Ellis, who toured the country with Rudy Giuliani to testify before bodies with false claims about how the 2020 election was stolen from serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT), has become the fourth of the 19 people charged with conspiracy to overturn the Georgia results to take a plea deal, with terms similar to the other three.
Jenna Ellis, the lawyer for Donald Trump who was also facing criminal charges for attempted election subversion, is taking a plea deal, pleading guilty to one count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings.
In Fulton county on Tuesday, Ellis became the fourth of 19 defendants to plead guilty as part of the wide-ranging racketeering charges into Trump and allies in the 2020 election in Georgia. Last week, both Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro pleaded guilty before their trials were to start. Scott Hall, an Atlanta bail bondsman, has also pleaded guilty.
Ellis pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting false statements and writing. She was sentenced to five years’ probation, ordered to pay $5,000 restitution to the Georgia secretary of state, 100 hours of community service, and to write a letter of apology. She also agreed to cooperate with prosecutors testify truthfully against the remaining defendants in the case.
Ellis came to tears as she addressed the court, saying she was relying on information that more experienced lawyers provided her and should have investigated further. Had she known what she knows now, she said, she would have declined to represent Trump.
She added that she looked back on “the whole experience with deep remorse”.
“I relied on others, including lawyers with many more years of experience than I, to provide me with true and reliable information,” she said. “What I should have done, but did not do, your honor, was make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true. In the frenetic pace of attempting to raise challenges to the election in several states, including Georgia, I failed to do my due diligence.”
…Ellis has been an outspoken critic of her former friend in recent months, calling Trump a “malignant narcissist” in an interview back in September.
“I simply can’t support him for elected office again,” Ellis said. “Why I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.”
Her argument is that she was naive and ignorant and allowed herself to be manipulated by others, even though she is a lawyer presumably with some years of experience dealing with shady and manipulative characters.
I figured that she would flip after she began complaining that SSAT was not helping with her legal fees.
Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis seems to be marching steadily along, picking off one defendant after another to defect from SSAT. SSAT must be wondering if any of the remaining 14 defendants will stand with him or if all turn against him.
The trial judge was worried that they would not be able to find a venue large enough to accommodate all the defendants and their retinues. That worry may have been premature.
As I mentioned on the previous Sidney Powell post, this is the sort of thing RICO was made for… the people who realize first that they’re in serious trouble peel off and take sweetheart deals while they can, and every one that does makes things worse and worse for those that stay behind.
It’s all about weaponizing the fact that there is rarely any real honour amongst thieves.
I stated early on that I felt Fani Willis had made a mistake in raising so, so many charges against so, so many defendants instead of concentrating (in a Jack Smith stylee) on just a few very, very solid charges and on Trump specifically. It seemed, by comparison to what Smith had done, unfocused and likely to be vulnerable to undue delay, Trump’s signature tactic and really the only thing he’s got at this point.
Hooee am I ever happy to be wrong. The dominoes are falling. At this point I’m wondering if there’s going to be anyone who doesn’t turn against him.
jenorafeuer@2- What shocks me is how this racketeering seems just as motivated by cult leader worship as by greed. I don’t think of cults as entities able to grow to tens of millions of members in just a few years. I guess the pump was already primed.
I understand it’s expedient and even necessary but I’m sick of all these lawyers slapping their foreheads and going “lie? I shoulda done due diligence oh woe is me!” Uh, come on, you’re highly educated professionals who tried to steal a country. The court should have had someone play a laugh track when Ellis started sobbing.
News Flash
Meadows has flipped to Jack Smith. Presumably he’ll flip in Ga too.