August 05, 2024 03:04 PM UTC

Jenna Ellis Turns State's Evidence In Arizona Fake Electors Case

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Washington Post’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez reports, suspended Colorado lawyer and convicted felon Jenna Ellis has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in Arizona in the indictment against a number of officials from Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign and conspiring Arizona Republicans, in the plot to replace the legal electors in that state with a slate of fake electors operating on the false belief that the election had been stolen from Trump:

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) reached a cooperation agreement Monday with Jenna Ellis, who was a legal adviser to Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign and was one of 18 defendants indicted in April on felony charges related to alleged efforts to try to subvert President Biden’s victory in the state four years ago, according to prosecutors.

The attorney general has agreed to drop nine felony charges against Ellis in exchange for her full cooperation with the investigation into the GOP plan to try to deliver Arizona’s 11 electoral votes to Trump instead of the rightful winner, Biden.

AP:

Ellis has previously pleaded not guilty to fraud, forgery and conspiracy charges in the Arizona case. Seventeen other people charged in the case have pleaded not guilty to the felony charges — including Giuliani, Trump presidential chief of staff Mark Meadows and 11 Republicans who submitted a document to Congress falsely declaring Trump had won Arizona.

“Her insights are invaluable and will greatly aid the State in proving its case in court,” Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a statement. “As I stated when the initial charges were announced, I will not allow American democracy to be undermined — it is far too important. Today’s announcement is a win for the rule of law.”

One of the provisions of Ellis’ plea agreement in Georgia was that she would fully cooperate with all future investigations, and that post-conviction vow of cooperation appears to have spared Ellis additional felony charges in Arizona in exchange for testimony against the bigger fish in the case like fellow disbarred couptorneys Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman. Ellis has been metaphorically dead to the MAGA world ever since she admitted the “Big Lie” was a lie in her first censure deal with Colorado attorney regulators that allowed Ellis to temporarily retain her license to practice law. Ellis’ subsequent felony conviction in Georgia is what prompted regulators to reopen Ellis’ case, leading to her three-year law license suspension. Obviously, another felony would have only made things worse.

The metamorphosis of Jenna Ellis from a member of Trump’s so-called “Elite Strike Force” of lawyers filing worthless lawsuits across the country in support of Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election to a lead witness against her fellow lawyers in the Arizona “fake electors” case is a much bigger plot point in the story of the 2020 presidential election than she gets credit for. Not due to the quality of her legal representation, of course, but in her unreserved admission that there was never any truth to the Trump campaign’s allegations of election fraud–allegations that Trump relies upon to this day and a majority of Republicans despite the lack of any evidence still believe.

The only credibility Jenna Ellis has left today is to discredit her old boss. And for that purpose at least, the timing could not be better.