Jenna Ellis, a lawyer who advised former President Donald Trump in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, entered a guilty plea Tuesday in the sprawling Georgia case against the ex-president and his allies.
Ms. Ellis pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting false statements/writings, making her the third lawyer to admit wrongdoing in the case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
Like the others, Ms. Ellis agreed to cooperate with prosecutors pursuing racketeering charges against Mr. Trump, the GOP front-runner in the 2024 race for president.
Under the plea deal, Ms. Ellis faces five years of probation, a $5,000 fine and 100 hours of community service.
Speaking to the court, Ms. Ellis, 38, said she takes her role as a lawyer seriously and pointed the finger at senior attorneys who joined her in challenging the 2020 election won by President Biden. She had served as a senior legal adviser to the Trump campaign.
“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 various states, including Georgia, I failed to do my due diligence.”
She said she looks back at her role in the post-2020 effort with “deep remorse.”
Fulton County prosecutors said she made false statements 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 W. Giuliani, a key figure in Mr. Trump’s push to root out fraud after Mr. Biden’s win.
Previously, lawyer Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts for her role in accessing election data from Coffee County, Georgia, and lawyer Kenneth 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.
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.
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.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.