Donald Trump betrayed by his followers. A lawyer, former member of the Trump campaign accused by the Georgia courts of having participated in the attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 election in that state, pleaded guilty Tuesday in Atlanta and could now testify against the Former President of the United States.
Jenna Ellis, 38, is the 4th person, out of the 19 defendants in the case, to reach a guilty plea agreement with the courts, so many defections which weaken the defense of the Republican, candidate for 2024, who pleaded not guilty in Georgia.
In a court document, she admitted to helping the lawyers leading the team, including Rudy Giuliani, submit false documents to the Georgia state senate in an attempt to overturn the outcome of the presidential election in this southern state, in favor of Donald Trump.
Tearful statement
In doing so, “I failed to do my job properly,” she said in a statement Tuesday morning. In tears in the courtroom, according to a television broadcast, Jenna Ellis declared, “as a lawyer and as a Christian”, that she should have ensured that the facts she then put forward “were, in reality, true.”
“I believe in the integrity of elections. If I knew what I know now, I would have refused to represent Donald Trump in these post-election proceedings,” she said, standing in an Atlanta courtroom.
“I look back on this entire moment with great remorse,” she said. Her agreement with the courts spares her a possible prison sentence: she is now sentenced to 5 years of suspended sentence with probation, 100 hours of community service and must pay $5,000.
Organized crime
In total, 19 defendants including Donald Trump are cited in the indictment issued on August 14 under a Georgia law on organized crime used by prosecutor Fani Willis.
Last week, the former president’s other lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell (whom Donald Trump denies was formally his counsel) pleaded guilty in this case. A first defendant, Scott Hall, had already pleaded guilty at the end of September.
“There are now three parts of the conspiracy with at least one co-defendant pleading guilty. Jenna Ellis was close to Donald Trump during these crucial weeks and will be able to provide her personal knowledge of Trump’s actions. His testimony will undoubtedly also be useful for the federal prosecutions” which target the former president in Washington, explains to 20 minutes national security lawyer Bradley Moss.
This 4th guilty plea procedure in Georgia comes on the same day as the expected confrontation in New York, in a very different case, in civil and real estate matters, between Donald Trump and Michael Cohen, also a former lawyer for the Republican billionaire who chose to testify against him. The date of the trial in Atlanta is not yet known.
The former president, leading the race in the Republican primaries for the 2024 presidential election, is the target of several legal proceedings, including a trial at the federal level starting March 4 in Washington for having tried to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election.