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Lawyer Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in an Atlanta courtroom Tuesday, making her the third attorney to admit to wrongdoing and agree to cooperate with prosecutors who are zeroing in on former President Donald Trump while he coasts toward the GOP’s nomination in 2024.
Ms. Ellis, 38, pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting false statements/writings stemming from assertions she made to Georgia lawmakers in a post-2020 election visit to a state Senate committee. Under the plea deal, Ms. Ellis faces five years of probation, a $5,000 fine and 100 hours of community service.
Ms. Ellis was a vocal champion of Mr. Trump’s efforts to root out fraud and overturn the 2020 results in Georgia and other key states. Now, she joins lawyers Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro as former Trump foot soldiers who, three years later, will assist Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis instead of going to trial and risking harsher punishment.
The steady drip of guilty pleas heaps pressure on Mr. Trump, who faces trials in multiple jurisdictions while he enjoys a wide lead in the 2024 GOP presidential primary.
“For any prosecutor, the more cooperators who come on board, the stronger the prosecution becomes,” said Thomas P. Hogan, a visiting assistant professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston. “An old rule for prosecutors and defense lawyers is as follows: One cooperator is good, but not decisive. Two cooperators who corroborate each other are very powerful. Three strong cooperators often is the death knell for the defense in a conspiracy prosecution.”
Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Steve Sadow, did not respond to an emailed request for comment on the Ellis plea. The ex-president says the racketeering charges from Georgia and other cases are designed to blunt his political ambitions and amount to an attack on his free speech.
Fulton County prosecutors said Ms. Ellis made false statements about in December 2020 to state lawmakers in Georgia examining the election results.
They noted that Ms. Ellis worked closely with former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a key figure in Mr. Trump’s push to root out fraud after Mr. Biden’s win. Prosecutors said the objectionable statements included false claims about dead and under-age persons registering to vote in Georgia and unsubstantiated claims about election workers.
Addressing the court, Ms. Ellis did not criticize Mr. Trump directly but pointed the finger at senior lawyers involved in post-election push.
“I relied on others, including others with many more years of experience than I, to provide me with true and reliable information, especially since my role involved speaking to the media and to legislators in various states,” Ms. Ellis said. “What I did not do, but should have done, 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.”
Ms. Ellis, wiping away tears, said she regrets her role in the post-2020 effort.
“I believe in and I value election integrity,” she said. “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.”
Judge Scott McAfee said he appreciated the statement because “all too often, I don’t get to hear the perspective of the accused in these cases.”
Last week, Ms. Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts for her role in accessing election data from Coffee County, Georgia, and Mr. Chesebro pleaded guilty to a felony count related to an effort to set up a false slate of electors before Congress confirmed Mr. Biden’s win.
“These are key, inside players in the events that form the basis of the charges. And given their positions as Trump attorneys, they have critical information about the events,” said Steven D. Schwinn, a professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, Law School. “Their cooperation will be significant, to say the least. Moreover, their cooperation will almost surely lead others to cooperate, too.”
All three lawyers pleaded guilty under Georgia’s “first offender” law, which allows them to wipe the offenses from their permanent record if they comply with the terms of their sentences.
“It’s telling to me that the prosecutors have agreed to relatively light punishments for these three: in evaluating the risk-benefit balance, it seems that prosecutors have decided that their cooperation is so valuable that prosecutors can exchange it for relatively modest sentences,” Mr. Schwinn said. “If that’s true, then their cooperation could dramatically increase the chances of convictions of non-cooperators, including Trump.”
A fourth defendant, bail bondsman Scott Hall, pleaded guilty to five counts related to his presence in a restricted area of an election office during the alleged breach of voting machines in Coffee County in January 2021. He also agreed to testify at future trials.
Their pleas leave 15 people, including Mr. Trump, facing trial for their roles in an alleged conspiracy to overturn the election results in Georgia.
Besides the ex-president and Mr. Giuliani, there are pending cases against major players such as former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who arranged calls with Georgia officials and visited the state; John Eastman, a lawyer accused of playing a key role in setting up alternate electors who’d favor Mr. Trump; and Jeffrey Clark, a former Department of Justice who allegedly claimed the DOJ found issues in the election and leaned on Georgia lawmakers to consider a special session to examine 2020 votes.
Mr. Hogan said Mr. Trump won’t be among defendants taking a plea deal because the case is “the equivalent of a death penalty case for his political career.”
“Regardless of who pleads to what, he is in the position where he must go to trial,” he said. “District Attorney Willis is not going to offer him any plea deal which would allow him to remain in politics. With those dynamics in place, he has to go to trial and his defense lawyers have to play the cards they are dealt.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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