Jenna Ellis
Jenna Lynn Ellis is an American conservative lawyer who was a member of Donald Trump's 2020 re-election campaign's legal team. She is a former deputy district attorney in Weld County, Colorado. During the Trump presidency, she presented herself as a "constitutional law attorney" during cable news appearances, though The New York Times reported that her background did not reflect such expertise and The Wall Street Journal reported that she had no history in any federal cases.
Ellis was a critic of Donald Trump and his supporters in 2015 and early 2016 until he became the 2016 Republican nominee for president, at which point she began voicing support, including in media appearances. She was hired by Trump in November 2019 as a senior legal adviser. From November 2020 to January 2021, she was a member of what she characterized as an "elite strike force team" that made efforts to overturn Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. She made claims that Trump was the actual winner of the election and drafted two memos asserting that vice president Mike Pence could change the results.
In March 2023, Ellis was publicly censured by the chief disciplinary judge of the Colorado Supreme Court for recklessly making 10 public misrepresentations, which she admitted to, about the 2020 presidential election, including the claims that Trump won the election and that the election was stolen from him. In August 2023, she and 18 others were indicted by a Fulton County grand jury in the Georgia election racketeering prosecution for allegedly participating in a criminal enterprise in furtherance of Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the presidential election. In October 2023, Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements in writing. In April 2024, Ellis was indicted by an Arizona grand jury for allegedly participating in attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state. On May 28, 2024, her Colorado law license was suspended for three years. In August 2024 Ellis agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in the Arizona elector case in a deal that allows her to avoid potential jail time.
Early life and education
Ellis was homeschooled by her parents. Her education included a strong emphasis on civics. She, as well as one of her brothers, worked on a U.S. Senate campaign while in high school. She also interned for the Colorado lieutenant governor at age 14 and the Boulder County district attorney's office a few years later.In 2003, Ellis enrolled at Cedarville University. While there, she received a "significant financial award" from a civil case related to her being a victim of a violent crime at age 16. She used the funds to set up a scholarship to benefit future Cedarville students. "I wanted the money to mean something more," said Ellis. "Starting a scholarship endowment was a way for me to heed that call to minister to others, and ultimately, further the Gospel of Christ through others' ministries." The Jenna Lynn Ellis Award is awarded each year to a junior or senior with a minimum 3.3 GPA and who wishes to pursue a career in law, with an emphasis on criminal prosecution and victim advocacy.
In 2004, Ellis transferred to Colorado State University in order to study journalism. In 2011, she received a Juris Doctor from the University of Richmond School of Law.
Career
From 2012 to 2013, Ellis was a deputy district attorney in Weld County, Colorado. As a prosecutor, she worked on traffic offense matters and other low-level misdemeanors, including assault and theft, in state courts.Ellis was fired as deputy district attorney after six months, which she attributed to her insistence that she would not prosecute a case she thought was unethical. Asked by The Wall Street Journal, the Weld County District Attorney's office declined to comment on the matter. The Colorado Sun published government records in December 2020 indicating Ellis had been fired for "mistakes", including a failure to "adhere" to Colorado's Victim Rights Act. Because the mistakes were attributed to "deficiencies in her education and experience" Ellis retained unemployment benefits. The report stated: "The number of cases in which committed an irreparable, egregious act was not significant compared to the total number of cases she processed.... There are insufficient facts was not performing the duties to the best of her ability." The 2020 Trump campaign responded to The Colorado Sun on Ellis's behalf, stating that this was a "nonstory".
Private practice
After leaving the DA's office, Ellis went into private practice at law firms based in Northern Colorado. She defended clients in state courts in matters pertaining to assault, domestic abuse, prostitution, and theft. According to Ellis, she also worked in cases regarding immigration and tenancy. Records showed that Ellis took part in approximately 30 state court cases which began from 2012 or 2016, including one state appeals court case; this was described as a 'sparse record' by another Colorado lawyer interviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Ellis did not take part in election law cases or any federal cases before December 2020.In 2013, Ellis worked for IE Discovery in one lawsuit involving a contract dispute. IE Discovery is a company that assists the U.S. Department of State in legal discovery matters. Ellis later claimed to have been an "attorney for the U.S. Department of State"; she was not employed by the State Department.
In 2015, Ellis became an affiliate faculty member of Colorado Christian University, and later an assistant professor of legal studies, until her departure in 2018. Ellis taught political science and pre-law to undergraduates.
In 2017, Ellis became a writer for the Washington Examiner, where she falsely claimed to have a history of being a "professor of constitutional law". Colorado Christian University does not have a law school.
Ellis self-published a book, The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution: A Guide for Christians to Understand America's Constitutional Crisis, in 2015. She argued that the Constitution of the United States must only be interpreted according to the Bible. Her view of the Supreme Court of the United States legalizing same-sex marriage, in Obergefell v. Hodges, was that it would lead to polygamy and pedophilia becoming accepted. In 2016, Ellis described homosexuals as "sinners" whose "conduct is vile and abominable". Robert Cochran Jr., an expert in Christian law, described Ellis' views as "further to the right" than most conservative Christian legal scholars.
Criticism of Trump
Between late 2015 and early 2016, Ellis was a critic of Donald Trump's efforts to become the presidential nominee for the Republican Party. In February 2016, Ellis said that Trump was not a real Christian because he did not seek forgiveness or repentance. She criticized Trump's attacks on the media and of his wish to tighten libel laws; when sharing a Washington Post article accusing him of seeking to destroy American democracy, she claimed that Trump was incapable of handling criticism and that this rendered him "insanely dangerous to the fundamental American value of freedom of speech". In a later radio interview, she said that Trump's views on libel laws constituted "one of the greatest threats to our liberty" and proposed that the Republican Party set up a brokered convention to stop him from becoming the party's presidential nominee.Ellis criticized Trump's supporters' arguments in support of him and that they neither cared "about facts or logic" nor were they "seeking truth", before going on to indirectly brand them as "narcissists". When sharing a meme about how Hillary Clinton's supporters did not care about her being an "unethical, corrupt, lying, criminal dirtbag", Ellis stated that this was also true of the relationship between Trump and his supporters and that the same logic applied.
Joining Trump
After Trump became the Republican nominee for president, Ellis abandoned her earlier opposition towards him and would later express support for him in the 2016 presidential election. When confronted in November 2020 over her earlier opposition to Trump and her subsequent change of opinion, Ellis, who was now a senior legal adviser for Trump's attempts to contest the result of the 2020 presidential election, stated that her previous criticisms of Trump were not a secret, that her earlier statements demonstrated that she thought for herself, and that she was straightforward about her opinions and whether or not these had changed over time. She then claimed that she had been "completely wrong about Trump back then", something that she was "glad to have learned", due to not having personally known him at the time, and that she had changed her opinion of him "based on fact and personal knowledge". Ellis said that she now saw Trump as "a sincere Christian, the best president in modern history", and as having "kept his promises to the American people", and described herself as being "proud to stand with him and his goals for the future of and all of its citizens."The New York Times reports that Ellis has made appearances on Denver radio shows as a legal commentator. In 2018, Ellis left Colorado Christian University to work for the, as director of its public policy division, the.
By late 2018, Ellis was defending Trump in cable news appearances, as well as alleging bias in the FBI, presenting herself as a "constitutional law attorney". By 2019, Ellis had often been featured by Fox News as a guest.
In 2020, Ellis became the special counsel for the Thomas More Society, a conservative group that has filed 2020 election-related lawsuits via the Amistad Project organization. The Amistad Project cited Ellis as one of their "Leadership and Advisory Board" members. Ellis and the Thomas More Society said that Ellis is not working for Amistad. Ellis also stated that Amistad had cited her as a board member without her approval.