Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis flips on former president with plea deal in Georgia case

Former campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis Tuesday pleaded guilty and flipped on former President Donald Trump in the Georgia election conspiracy case.

In a major blow to Trump, Ellis tearfully admitted her role in the alleged sprawling effort to steal the 2020 election.

“If I knew then what I knew now I would have declined to represent Donald Trump,” Ellis said in an emotional mea culpa.

Ellis suggested that she was led astray by more senior lawyers on Team Trump. Among them was Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s co-defendants.

“I failed to do my due diligence,” she said.

This booking photo provided by the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office shows Jenna Ellis on Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023, in Atlanta, after she surrendered and was booked. (Fulton County Sheriff’s Office via AP)

Ellis joins two other onetime Trump lawyers, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, in pleading guilty and agreeing to testify against Trump and his co-defendants.

The Ellis plea deal means four out of Trump’s 18 co-defendants in the racketeering conspiracy case have pleaded guilty, a grim sign for Trump and his acolytes.

Ellis pleaded guilty to making false statements in Georgia during the Trump campaign’s effort to overturn his narrow loss to President Biden in the battleground Peach State.

The bogus claims of widespread voter fraud amounted to a key prong of Trump’s alleged sweeping plot to stay in power after losing the election.

Significantly, Ellis was accused of participating alongside Giuliani in amplifying the false claims, some of which they spewed at a legislative hearing in December 2020.

That would potentially make her cooperation a particularly dire sign for the ex-New York City mayor. Giuliani, who has already been found liable of defaming two Atlanta election workers, worked with Ellis and Powell in what they boasted was an “elite legal strike force” to overturn Biden’s win in court.

The legal effort failed dismally as scores of courts rejected Trump’s election appeals. The former president allegedly incited a violent crowd of his extremist supporters to physically prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s win on Jan. 6.