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Jenna Ellis, Former Trump Lawyer, Will Cooperate in Arizona Election Fraud Case
Ms. Ellis is the first of 18 defendants to reach a deal with prosecutors in a case that charges them with trying to overturn Arizona’s election results in 2020.
Jenna Ellis, a lawyer who played a major role in the efforts to keep Donald J. Trump in power after his 2020 election loss, reached a cooperation agreement on Monday as part of a deal with prosecutors leading an election interference case in Arizona.
She is the first of the 18 defendants in the case to reach such an agreement. Ms. Ellis already pleaded guilty to a felony last year in a similar case in Georgia. In Arizona, nine felony charges against her were dropped in exchange for her cooperation and an agreement to testify truthfully.
“This agreement represents a significant step forward in our case,” Kris Mayes, the Arizona attorney general, said in a statement. Referring to Ms. Ellis, she added: “Her insights are invaluable and will greatly aid the state in proving its case in court. As I stated when the initial charges were announced, I will not allow American democracy to be undermined — it is far too important.”
Ms. Ellis’s lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Democratic prosecutors in five states have brought criminal charges against Trump allies related to efforts to overturn the 2020 results, with the cases in Georgia and Arizona being the most expansive. Ms. Mayes brought charges in April, and a trial is not expected until next year at the earliest. In June, the Arizona defendants filed an initial challenge, seizing on a new state law aimed at curbing litigation and prosecutions involving political figures. Election-interference charges have also been brought in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada, though a judge in Nevada threw out the case there in June, saying that prosecutors had filed in the wrong venue. The state attorney general, Aaron Ford, has appealed the decision. Ms. Ellis was called a senior legal adviser by the 2020 Trump campaign. But she referred to herself as being part of an “elite strike force team” of lawyers, and often appeared with Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer at the time, as both advanced false claims about the election.
By last year, when she was tearfully pleading guilty in an Atlanta courtroom, Ms. Ellis expressed regret and said she had failed to do her “due diligence” in vetting the Trump campaign’s claims of election fraud.
“If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these postelection challenges,” she told an Atlanta judge in court. “I look back on this experience with deep remorse.”
Ms. Ellis had a so-called proffer meeting with Arizona prosecutors on June 17, where a potential deal was discussed, according to court filings. After the meeting, the attorney general’s office determined that “cooperation is in its best interest,” according to a written agreement signed by Ms. Ellis and her lawyer.
Ms. Ellis had connections to many of the central players in the plan to deploy fake electors in states that Mr. Trump had lost. And she herself was deeply involved: She was among the advisers urging him to press his vice president, Mike Pence, who would be overseeing the certification of the election results at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to not open any Electoral College votes from six key states won by President Biden.
The Arizona defendants have each been charged with nine counts of fraud, forgery and conspiracy. The indictment describes a series of efforts to overturn the state’s election results, including the plan to deploy fake electors there and steps some took to put pressure on “officials responsible for certifying election results.”
The 18 defendants include all 11 of the fake electors as well as seven Trump advisers, including Mr. Giuliani and Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff.
Mr. Trump is listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Arizona case but faces criminal charges in both the Georgia case and a federal case led by Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by the Justice Department.
Earlier this year, Mr. Trump was convicted in New York on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, related to the reimbursement of hush money paid to the porn star Stormy Daniels to cover up a sex scandal around the 2016 election.
Danny Hakim is a reporter on the Investigations team at The Times, focused primarily on politics. More about Danny Hakim
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