2024-08-06 14:45:02
Conservative media personality and former Donald Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis has made a deal to cooperate with Arizona prosecutors in their case against the state’s GOP fake electors who sought to keep Trump in office even though he lost the election.
Ellis, who was censured in Colorado last year for making false statements about the 2020 election, and who pleaded guilty in October to a felony charge in Georgia for her attempts to overturn the election results, signed the agreement on Monday morning, according to Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes.
In exchange for her cooperation, the prosecution has agreed to drop its charges against Ellis.
“This agreement represents a significant step forward in our case,” Mayes said in a statement. “I am grateful to Ms. Ellis for her cooperation with our investigation and prosecution. Her insights are invaluable and will greatly aid the State in proving its case in court. 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.”
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Ellis had previously been charged with nine felonies including fraud, forgery and conspiracy for the part she played in Arizona’s 2020 fake elector scheme to keep Trump in the White House.
Her actions in the Arizona case mirror those she made in Georgia, where she also took a plea deal and agreed to cooperate with the prosecution.
Even so, in a statement from her lawyers, Ellis continued to claim she was not involved in the fake elector scheme in Arizona.
“We are grateful the Arizona Attorney General’s Office completely dismissed the indictment against Jenna Ellis as she was not involved in the so-called ‘fake elector’ scheme,” her attorneys Matt Brown and Matt Melito said in a statement. “Jenna was originally told she was not a target and her cooperation is her continued willingness to tell the truth.”
In the April 23 indictment in the Arizona case, all of the 11 fake electors were implicated in an attempt to deceive “the public with false claims of election fraud in order to prevent the lawful transfer of the presidency.”
The fake electors are accused of attempting to keep “President Donald J. Trump in office against the will of Arizona voters, and depriving Arizona voters of their right to vote and have their votes counted.”
The group — which includes two Arizona State senators who were also delegates at this year’s Republican National Convention — is also charged with pressuring the Maricopa Board of Supervisors, the state Legislature and then-Gov. Doug Ducey to change the election results.
The fake electors are additionally accused of trying to trick Arizonans into believing that their fraudulent votes were contingent on a successful outcome in Trump’s challenge of the 2020 election results, when they were actually trying to urge Vice President Mike Pence to reject the votes for Biden on Jan. 6, 2021.
According to the indictment, the fake electors forged certificates of Electoral College votes for then-president Trump and Pence and filed those with the Arizona secretary of state and the chief judge of the federal district court for the District of Arizona.
Ellis expressed regret in a Georgia court last October, after pleading guilty to making false statements about widespread voting fraud at a Georgia legislative hearing several weeks after the 2020 election.
She was subsequently sentenced to five years probation, ordered to pay $5,000 in restitution, and perform 100 hours of community service for one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements in writing.
During the Dec. 3, 2020, Georgia Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing, Ellis was joined by Trump campaign attorneys Rudy Giuliani (who was also charged in Arizona’s fake elector case) and Ray Smith where they made false statements claiming that nearly 100,000 fraudulent ballots were counted in Georgia, that 2,506 convicted felons voted illegally, and more than 66,000 underage Georgians cast ballots in the 2020 election.
At the time, Georgia prosecutors said that the bogus voting fraud claims were an attempt by the Trump campaign to convince the Georgia General Assembly to ignore the legitimate election certification process and declare Trump the rightful winner based on the votes from a false slate of GOP electors.
Ellis apologized for representing the Trump campaign in the push to persuade state lawmakers in Georgia and several other states — including Arizona — with flawed legal arguments to challenge the results of the election.
“I relied on others, including lawyers with many more years of experience than me, to provide me with true and reliable information, especially since my role involved speaking to the media and to legislators in various states,” the tearful 38-year-old Colorado attorney said.
“In the frenetic pace of attempting to raise challenges to the election in several states, including Georgia, I failed to do my due diligence,” she said. “I believe in and I value election integrity. If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post election challenges.”
In Georgia, Ellis was sentenced through the state’s First Offender Act, which allows her conviction to be sealed from court records if she successfully completed the terms of probation and fully cooperated with prosecutors. Ellis was required to turn over all evidence related to the case and to truthfully testify as a state’s witness in the trials of the remaining co-defendants.
Arizona’s 11 fake electors who still face criminal charges are:
- Kelli Ward, former AZGOP chairman
- Arizona Sen. Jake Hoffman, leader of the Arizona Freedom Caucus
- Arizona Sen. Anthony Kern, member of the Arizona Freedom Caucus
- Tyler Bowyer, Turning Point USA CEO
- Michael Ward, husband of Kelli Ward
- Nancy Cottle, a Republican who’s been active in local politics for a decade
- James Lamon, a failed 2022 U.S. Senate candidate
- Robert Montgomery, former chairman of the Cochise County Republican Committee
- Samuel Moorhead, former chairman of Gila County Republican Party
- Lorraine Pellegrino, former president of the Ahwatukee Republican Women
- Gregory Safsten, former executive director of the AZGOP
Several of the fake electors, including Hoffman, Kern, Ward and Bowyer, have continued to spread the unfounded claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, even though no evidence of that has ever come to light.
Hoffman sent a letter to Pence on Jan. 5, 2021, asking him to delay the certification of the election results and to check with the Arizona Legislature to determine which slate of presidential electors to use.
Other members of the Trump campaign, like Ellis, or those who worked alongside it to facilitate the fake electors’ work, who still face charges are:
- Rudy Giuliani, an attorney for Trump and one of the main points of contact for the Trump campaign as it sought to overturn the 2020 election and ensure Trump would serve a second term
- Mark Meadows, who was Trump’s chief of staff in 2020
- Christina Bobb, the Republican National Committee’s senior counsel for election integrity and a former attorney for the Trump campaign who was accused in the indictment of making “false claims of widespread election fraud in Arizona and in six other states.”
- John Eastman, a former Trump lawyer who is facing possible disbarment in California for his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
- Boris Epshteyn, a former Trump aide who is still one of the former president’s advisors.
- Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign aide who was also indicted in the Georgia case.
Stanley Dunlap, senior reporter for States Newsroom’s Georgia Recorder, contributed to this report.
