Trump codefendant Jenna Ellis flips, says she has ‘deep remorse’

WASHINGTON — A third attorney who falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen flipped Tuesday and agreed to cooperate in the criminal case against former President Donald Trump in Georgia — saying she had “deep remorse” for her actions.

Jenna Ellis, 38, tearfully said she “failed” to do “due diligence” on claims that the election was stolen through fraud in swing states including Georgia, where President Biden beat Trump by fewer than 12,000 votes — joining former Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Ken Chesebro in also pleading guilty.

“I relied on others, including lawyers 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,” Ellis said in a Fulton County courtroom Tuesday.

“What I did not do, but should have done, your honor, was to 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.”

She insisted that she had “deep remorse” for her role in the election challenges.

“I believe in and I value election integrity,” she went on. “If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges.”

Ellis concluded through tears, “For those failures of mine, your honor, I have taken responsibility already before the Colorado bar, who censured me. And I now take responsibility before this court and apologize to the people of Georgia.”

Ellis is expected to receive a sentence of 5 years of probation, $5,000 in restitution and 100 hours of community service — in exchange for having no contact with the media or codefendants and cooperating and testifying at other trials in the 19-person RICO case including Trump.

Fulton County’s elected prosecutor Fani Willis, a Democrat, brought the case in August against Trump and his allies — using conspiracy statutes intended for organized crime. She has asked for Trump’s trial to begin March 4.

Trump, 77, is seeking a rematch against Biden in next year’s election and claims the case is political. He faces a separate federal criminal case in Washington for his efforts to reverse his 2020 defeat, a federal criminal case in Miami for allegedly mishandling national security information and a state case in Manhattan related to 2016 hush money payments.