PHOENIX – Jenna Ellislawyer for donald trump During her 2020 presidential campaign, she pleaded not guilty on Tuesday in the “fake voters” case in Arizona, where she and 17 other defendants face forgery, fraud and conspiracy charges related to alleged efforts to overturn the election results of 2020.
All 18 defendants have pleaded not guilty in Arizona. Ellis in 2023 pleaded guilty in the Georgia election interference case, in which Trump was also charged.
Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn and 2022 Republican Senate candidate Jim Lamon also appeared virtually in court Tuesday for their arraignments in the case, pleading not guilty. Epshteyn was a lawyer and adviser to Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns and recently appeared with Trump in court in New York during the former president’s trial. Lamon was on Trump’s list of potential voters before the 2020 election.
The charging documents allege that a month after the 2020 election, 11 Trump supporters gathered at the Arizona Republican Party headquarters in Phoenix to sign a certificate claiming to be Arizona’s 11 electors for the Electoral College, even though Joe Biden won the state by 10,457 votes and state officials have certified his electors. The state Republican Party documented the signing of the certificate in a post on social media and sent it to Congress and the National Archives.
Former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former White House chief of staff Marcos Prados were also among those indicted by a state grand jury in April in connection with the plan.
Ellis was a senior legal advisor to Trump’s campaign from early 2019 until shortly after he left office in January 2021. She was part of the legal team that advised him as he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, an experience which saw her subpoenaed, censured and indicted in multiple jurisdictions.
During Ellis’ 2023 guilty plea in Georgia, she said she “failed to do my due diligence” in other states as she wiped away tears.
“In the frantic pace of trying to mount challenges to elections in multiple states, including Georgia, I have failed to do due diligence,” Ellis said in Fulton County Superior Court last year. “If I knew what I know now, I would have refused to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges. I remember this entire experience with deep remorse.”
In 2023, a Colorado Supreme Court justice censored Ellis, a Colorado native, for violating a state rule of professional conduct that prohibits “false statements” by lawyers. She recently had her law license suspended in Colorado for three years.
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
