Trump lawyer pleads guilty over efforts to overturn election loss in Georgia

Jenna Ellis speaks with her lawyer Franklin Houge (AP Photo/John Bazemore, Pool)

Lawyer and prominent conservative media figure Jenna Ellis has pleaded guilty to a felony charge over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, tearfully telling the judge she looks back on that time with “deep remorse”.

Ellis, the fourth defendant in the case to enter into a plea deal with prosecutors, was a vocal part of Trump’s re-election campaign in the last presidential cycle and was charged alongside the Republican former president and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law.

She pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting false statements and writings. She had been facing charges of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act, known as Rico, and soliciting the violation of oath by a public officer, both felonies.

She rose to speak after pleading guilty, fighting back tears as she said she would have not have represented Trump after the 2020 election if she had known then what she knows now, claiming she relied on lawyers with more experience than her and failed to verify the things they told her.

Jenna Ellis reads a statement to the court (John Bazemore/AP)

“What I did not do but should have done, your honour, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true,” the 38-year-old Ellis said.

The guilty plea comes just days after fellow lawyers Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro entered guilty pleas. That means three high-profile people responsible for pushing baseless legal challenges to Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory have agreed to accept responsibility for their roles rather than take their chances before a jury.

Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead lawyer in the Georgia case, used Ellis’s plea to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the racketeering charges brought by Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis against all 19 defendants.

“For the fourth time, Fani Willis and her prosecution team have dismissed the Rico charge in return for a plea to probation,” he said. “What that shows is this so-called Rico case is nothing more than a bargaining chip for DA Willis.”

He also noted that Ellis pleaded guilty to a charge that was not in the original indictment and does not include Trump.

She was sentenced to five years of probation along with 5,000 dollars (£4,100) in restitution, 100 hours of community service, writing an apology letter to the people of Georgia and testifying truthfully in trials related to this case.

The early pleas and the favourable punishment — probation rather than prison — could foreshadow similar outcomes for additional defendants who may see an admission of guilt and co-operation as their best hope for leniency.

Ellis is the fourth defendant in the case to enter into a plea deal (John Bazemore/AP)

Even so, their value as witnesses against Trump is unclear given that their direct participation in unfounded schemes will no doubt expose them to attacks on their credibility and bruising cross-examinations if they give evidence.

The indictment in the sweeping case details a number of accusations against Ellis, including that she helped author plans on how to disrupt and delay congressional certification of the 2020 election’s results on January 6 2021, the day a mob of Trump supporters eventually overran the US Capitol.

She 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 legislators and Trump at a meeting on the topic at the White House.

The indictment further says she similarly pushed state legislators to back false, pro-Trump electors in Georgia as well as Arizona and Michigan.

Prosecutor Daysha Young said in court on Tuesday that Ellis attended a December 2020 meeting of Georgia state senators with Trump lawyer and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and with Georgia-based lawyer Ray Smith.

Ellis “intentionally aided and abetted” the other two as they made false statements to the legislators, 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, Ms Young said.

Ellis wrote in August on X, 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 would not vote for him again, citing his “malignant, narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong”.

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.