A third former lawyer has pled guilty to attempting to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election defeat in Georgia.
Jenna Ellis, who was a member of the then president’s legal team, reached a plea deal with prosecutors rather than going to trial over the case.
She pleaded guilty to a felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings in exchange for a reduced sentence.
Ellis was charged alongside Trump and 17 others for violating the state’s anti-racketeering law.
The Georgia case is one of four criminal cases the former president is facing, and one of two specifically focused on his alleged attempts to reverse his defeat – the other being in Washington DC following the January 6 Capitol riot in 2021.
Prosecutors recommended five years of probation for Ellis, along with paying $5,000 in restitution, serving 100 hours of community service, writing an apology letter to the people of Georgia and testifying truthfully in trials related to this case.
In a teary statement, Ellis, 38, said she relied on lawyers with much more experience than her and failed to verify whether the things they told her were true.
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Ellis was a leading voice in efforts to overturn Trump’s defeat to Joe Biden, appearing alongside former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani in press conferences repeating claims about the election being rigged.
In one interview on 20 November 2020, she said: “With all those states [Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia] combined we know that the election was stolen from President Trump and we can prove that.”
She was censured in Colorado in March, where she was deputy district attorney in Weld County, after admitting she made false statements about the 2020 election.
Ellis joins Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, also members of Trump’s legal team, and Scott Hall, a pollster, in pleading guilty in the Georgia case. All three took plea deals.
Trump repeats false 2020 claims
Trump, the current frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, continues to claim without evidence that his 2020 loss was rigged.
While in New Hampshire to register for its presidential primary, he compared himself to Nelson Mandela over his four criminal cases.
“We’ve got to save our country from these fascists, these lunatics that we’re dealing with,” he said.
“They’re horrible people and they’re destroying our country.”
