Jenna Ellis Lied and Lied and Lied and Lied and Lied and Lied and Lied and Lied and Lied and Lied

In an attempt to settle the Colorado challenge to her law license, Jenna Ellis stipulated that she made ten “misrepresentations” in public statements she made about the election in 2020.

Those, um, lies were:

  • On November 13, 2020, Respondent claimed that “Hillary Clinton still has not conceded the 2016 election.”
  • On November 20, 2020, Respondent appeared on Mornings with Maria on Fox Business and stated: “We have affidavits from witnesses, we have voter intimidation, we have the ballots that were manipulated, we have all kinds of statistics that show that this was a coordinated effort in all of these states to transfer votes either from Trump to Biden, to manipulate the ballots, to count them in secret . . .”
  • On November 20, 2020, Respondent appeared on Spicer & Co. and stated, “with all those states [Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia] combined we know that the election was stolen from President Trump and we can prove that.”
  • On November 21, 2020, Respondent stated on Twitter under her handle @JennaEllisEsq., “ . . . SECOND, we will present testimonial and other evidence IN COURT to show how this election was STOLEN!”
  • On November 23, 2020, Respondent appeared on The Ari Melber Show on MSNBC and stated, “The election was stolen and Trump won by a landslide.”
  • On November 30, 2020, Respondent appeared on Mornings with Maria on Fox Business and stated, “President Trump is right that there was widespread fraud in this election, we have at least six states that were corrupted, if not more, through their voting systems. . . We know that President Trump won in a landslide.” She also stated, “The outcome of this election is actually fraudulent it’s wrong, and we understand than when we subtract all the illegal ballots, you can see that President Trump actually won in a landslide.”
  • On December 3, 2020, Respondent appeared on Mornings with Maria on Fox Business and stated, “The outcome of this election is actually fraudulent it’s wrong, and we understand than when we subtract all the illegal ballots, you can see that President Trump actually won in a landslide.”
  • On December 5, 2020, Respondent appeared on Justice with Judge Jeanine on Fox News and stated, “We have over 500,000 votes [in Arizona] that were cast illegally . . .”
  • On December 15, 2020, Respondent appeared on Greg Kelly Reports on Newsmax and stated, “The proper and true victor, which is Donald Trump . . .”
  • On December 22, 2020, Respondent stated on Twitter, through her handle @JennaEllisEsq, “I spent an hour with @DanCaplis for an in-depth discussion about President @realDonaldTrump’s fight for election integrity, the overwhelming evidence proving this was stolen, and why fact-finding and truth—not politics—matters!” [my emphasis]

Remarkably, Ellis told four of these lies on Fox, the same shows that feature prominently in the Dominion lawsuit against Fox. But because the lies Ellis was telling weren’t about Dominion, they don’t show up in the Dominion lawsuit. They’re just more instances of lies that Fox broadcast unchallenged.

The presiding disciplinary judge in the case, Byron Large, only censured Ellis in response to her admitted lies, because she didn’t tell those lies in her function as lawyer. (Politico reported on the decision here.) She didn’t stipulate to making these false claims to Trump or as the attorney of record in any of the lawsuits that Trump filed, and so, according to a standard adopted by the CO Supreme Court, she should only be censured, not disbarred.

Although ABA Standard 7.2 seemingly fits the fact pattern at hand, the Colorado Supreme Court’s opinion in In re Rosen counsels against relying on that Standard outside the context of lawyers’ misrepresentations while executing their professional duties. Rosen further counsels against imposing a sanction in the gap left between ABA Standards 5.11(b) and 5.13. Indeed, the Rosen court addressed at length the appropriate Standards to apply when faced with instances of lawyer misrepresentation:

Unless deceit or misrepresentation is directed toward a client, see ABA Standard 4.6, a tribunal, see ABA Standard 6.1, or the legal profession itself (as, for example, by making false representations in applying for admission to the bar), see ABA Standard 7.0, it is considered by the ABA Standards to be the violation of a duty owed to the public, see ABA Standard 5.0. As the violation of a duty owed to the public (as distinguished from a client, a court, or the profession), even conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation, as long as it falls short of actual criminality or comparable intentional conduct seriously adversely reflecting on one’s fitness to practice law, should generally be sanctioned only by reprimand, or censure. [emphasis original; citations omitted]

So long as Ellis is not found to have committed a crime with her lies, she can keep her law license.

Therein lies the rub.

Also as part of the stipulation, Ellis described her role on the Trump campaign this way:

From February 2019 to January 15, 2021, Respondent was a senior legal advisor to the then-serving President of the United States. She “was a member of President Trump’s legal team . . . that made efforts to challenge President Biden’s victory in the 2020 Presidential Election.”1 Though Respondent “was part of the legal team . . . she was not counsel of record for any of the lawsuits challenging the election results.”2

As it is, there was actually some dispute among witnesses to the January 6 Committee about whether Ellis was playing a legal role or a media one.

For example, Alyssa Farrah described that at one point, Mark Meadows considered Ellis to become White House spokesperson.

[W]hen Meadows brought me to the White House — well, he physically brought me tothe West Wing to ask if I would come back. He asked me to be press secretary. I said no, I am not — I would not be a good face for Donald Trump, I cannot defend a lot of what he’s doing, but I can professionalize the comms operation.

He said, okay, if its not you, it’s between Kayleigh McEnany and Jenna Ellis, And said, I mean, that’s not an embarrassment of riches, but between the two, I would go with Kayleigh McEnany.

[snip]

Q When you interacted with Ms. Ellis, did it seem like she was exercising more of a communications function or a campaign surrogate for television?

A Campaign surrogate for television, yeah. I didn’t get the sense that she was particularly up to speed on what we were working on in the White House or even what the campaign was. She was just sort of floating around the broader Trump orbit.

Here, though, Ellis has invoked a legal role that would protect great swaths of her communications under attorney-client privilege.

But among the communications turned over to the J6C not covered by privilege are a number that show Ellis advocating for Pence to break the law — including one email sharing that strategy with Jeanine Pirro. She was involved in the pressure campaign in the fake elector plot. Ellis invoked the Fifth Amendment over and over in her testimony to J6C.

Those actions weren’t included in the complaint against Ellis. Large emphasized that his decision was based only on, “the limited information before the Court—which includes only the four corners of the parties’ stipulation and their arguments supporting this outcome at the hearing on March 1, 2023.”

But to get there — to get to a place where Ellis was censured rather than disbarred — she had to admit to knowingly lying when she made false claims that served actions she took that may be criminal, convincing both electors and Pence to violate their duty under the law.

This decision, by itself, will not affect Jenna Ellis much. But the admission, in addition to all the evidence that Jack Smith has in hand, could.

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41 replies
  1. person1597 says:

    “Lies, dripping off your mouth like dirt
    Lies, lie in every step you walk
    Lies, whispered sweetly in my ear
    Lies, how do I get out of here
    Why, why you have to be so cruel
    Lies, lies, lies, I ain’t such a fool”
    https://youtu.be/KvDJyVbOQt8

  2. RMD says:

    We’re an empire now, and when we (lie), we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll (lie) again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s (liars) . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we (lie about).”
    ― Karl Rove

    mods in parens

    • David says:

      Apparently Rove didn’t say this, but a senior advisor to President Bush did, and in the context of coercing false confessions (pAbu Zubaydah seems to fit) that provided justification for the war on Iraq.

      But aside from attribution, and in the present context, these are dire words. Studying seems inadequate to the challenges.

      • RMD says:

        according to Snopes, someone in the Bush administration uttered it to Suskind, and, once published, became variously attributed to Rove without his confirmation—who denied saying it. My apologies.

        Agreed, study and sternly worded editorials are not going to cut it.

  3. Rwood0808 says:

    Why is “censure” even an option? Censure = Nothing.

    Censure/Shame are not a deterrent nor are they a punishment.

    • bmaz says:

      Oh, it is a real punishment. It is a specific and permanent negative record on an attorney’s bar record.

      • surfer2099 says:

        It’s really the lowest rung on the ladder, isn’t it?

        1. Disbarment – Permanent loss of license
        2. Suspension – Temporary loss of license
        3. Censure – Warning notice

        • PJB2point0 says:

          Being publicly censured by your State Bar can have serious ramifications for your legal practice. This is a highly competitive field and no one can easily afford to hamper the ability to attract paying clients.

        • earlofhuntingdon says:

          It may be the least of her worries, but I don’t imagine her malpractice insurance fees are going down after this.

        • earlofhuntingdon says:

          Echoing other commentators, this will have serious financial and legal consequences for Ellis. Among them, next time she’s up for discipline, and there will be a next time, she’ll get no benefit of the doubt.

          I would add that state bar authorities are loathe to impose sanctions on all but the most obvious violations and the lowest hanging fruit (sole practitioners with a limited network of powerful friends). The evidence against her must have been substantial.

        • Rugger_9 says:

          This marker is a good start, and FWIW I would apply the First Law of Dirtballs: they’ll always give you another chance to discipline them.

          How long before we see more from Ellis? She’s been rather quiet lately, but I’ll start the pool at one Friedman Unit (= six months).

        • Tom-1812 says:

          As the aging and disgraced Earl of Clarendon said to the beautiful young Duchess of Cleveland as she jeered at him for being discharged from the court of Charles II of England in 1667: “Ah, but Madame, you too shall grow old.”

        • Amicus says:

          A number of courts require disclosure of censure if you seek leave to appear pro hac vice – authorization to practice before the court when you are not a member of the local bar.

        • theartistvvv says:

          FWIW, consider that some might see such a censure as a badge of “honor”, indicating that she was “trying” …

    • Belynsky says:

      I agree with you. It’s a nothing, lawyers protecting their own,.
      This should be about the offense, not her career.
      She should be hounded to gates of hell.

  4. P J Evans says:

    Another Republican, talking like conceding is a legal requirement, when they tend to not do it themselves.

  5. harpie says:

    11/13/20 ELLIS acknowledged LIE: “Hillary Clinton still has not conceded the 2016 election.”

    11/20/20 ELLIS acknowledged LIE to BARTIROMO: “We have affidavits from witnesses, we have voter intimidation, we have the ballots that were manipulated, we have all kinds of statistics that show that this was a coordinated effort in all of these states to transfer votes either from Trump to Biden, to manipulate the ballots, to count them in secret . . .”

    11/20/20 ELLIS acknowledged LIE [on Spicer & Co.]: “with all those states [Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia] combined we know that the election was stolen from President Trump and we can prove that.”

    11/21/20 ELLIS acknowledged LIE [on Twitter, @JennaEllisEsq]: “ . . . SECOND, we will present testimonial and other evidence IN COURT to show how this election was STOLEN!”

    11/23/20 ELLIS acknowledged LIE [on The Ari Melber Show]: “The election was stolen and Trump won by a landslide.”

    11/30/20 ELLIS acknowledged LIE to BARTIROMO: “President Trump is right that there was widespread fraud in this election, we have at least six states that were corrupted, if not more, through their voting systems. . . We know that President Trump won in a landslide.” [] “The outcome of this election is actually fraudulent it’s wrong, and we understand than when we subtract all the illegal ballots, you can see that President Trump actually won in a landslide.”

    12/3/20 ELLIS acknowledged LIE to BARTIROMO: “The outcome of this election is actually fraudulent it’s wrong, and we understand than when we subtract all the illegal ballots, you can see that President Trump actually won in a landslide.”

    12/5/20 ELLIS acknowledged LIE to PIRRO: “We have over 500,000 votes [in Arizona] that were cast illegally . . .”

    12/15/20 ELLIS acknowledged LIE [on Newsmax]: “The proper and true victor, which is Donald Trump . . .”

    12/22/20 ELLIS acknowledged LIE [on Twitter @JennaEllisEsq]: “I spent an hour with @DanCaplis for an in-depth discussion about President @realDonaldTrump’s fight for election integrity, the overwhelming evidence proving this was stolen, and why fact-finding and truth—not politics—matters!”

    • Fly by Night says:

      So, everyone on this site (me included) thinks she lied. However, she would like you to know she disagrees. Per the Wall Street Journal:

      “In a statement on Thursday, Ms. Ellis said agreeing to censure was the best way to resolve ethics complaints against her. She said she never lied about the election.
      “I would NEVER lie,” Ms. Ellis said. “Lying requires INTENTIONALLY making a false statement. I never did that, nor did I stipulate to or admit that.””(emphasis WSJ)

      • HikaakiH says:

        Doubling down on ‘I was too stupid to know I was lying’ isn’t necessarily a stronger position to adopt than ‘I lied but now I’m repentant.’

      • Thomas7777 says:

        Fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, racketeering.

        No one has a right to be a liar.
        There is no legal business model that includes systematic, nationwide organization of relentless felonies.

        Ellis, and quite a lot of other celebrity fraudulent liars belong in jail for the next 20 years.

        • bmaz says:

          Lol, “Fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, racketeering.” The evidence would likely not support any of that sufficiently to obtain a conviction. And, yes, people do have the general right to lie, Ellis’ problem was that she did it as a lawyer. She negotiated a resolution with the bar that was fair. Get over it. Too many people here have gotten seriously out of their minds on all the Trump, and Trump related, cases.

  6. rattlemullet says:

    I too think censure is joke. Censure may have real consequences to an attorney with integrity but to her it is a get out jail card. The utter abuse of the court system through her filings that were knowingly, as the media frames it, “false claims”. They were actually lies, she knew they were lies bordering on outright fraud. She will be back as long as she retains a license to practice law. Disbarment is the only option as well as pay all court cost.

    • bmaz says:

      Censure in your primary bar jurisdiction is NOT a joke. You are full of it as to “disbarment”, that was never going to happen, and did not, in fact, happen. For the 5,993rd time, internet outrage does not control law.

      • rattlemullet says:

        No, it is not internet outrage. However it is outrage about a cabal of attorneys filing at least 60 plus pie in the sky voter fraud claims with no proof and while helping to enable an insurrection to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. Knowingly abusing the court systems. Knowingly lying. If anyone thinks censure will right the wrongs she/they have inflicted upon the judicial system and help destroy confidence in our voter systems by their court filings is in my view, mistaken.

        The white washing of an admitted liar begins.

        Michael Melito, an attorney for Ellis, told CNN in a statement, “My client remains a practicing attorney in good standing in the State of Colorado”.

        Good Standing, Seriously, she still gets to practice law? Truly when hiring an attorney its buyer beware. I guess the free market will dole out a just punishment because our court systems certainly meted out the lowest bar of punishment for her actions. At the very least her punishment should be she has to be a public defender. I assume for most attorneys that would be their purgatory.

        • Ben Soares says:

          A licensed plumber faces higher consequences.

          Her pipes don’t leak her integrity does, bad faith attornies should be treated accordingly…
          Don’t do what here ?
          I am confused by your comment above.

        • emptywheel says:

          She didn’t do this while plumbing. She did this while doing infomercials about plumbing.

        • Shadowalker says:

          Bmaz is correct. The way to fast track disbarment is to steal money from clients or get convicted of a felony among other things. What she was accused of, while distasteful, doesn’t rise to that level. Depending on the jurisdiction they can file for reinstatement immediately, after 3-5 years or it is permanent.

        • earlofhuntingdon says:

          The facts inducing outrage might be those that induce reasonable suspicion of a crime or serious ethical violation, meriting an investigation and, if proven, punishment. But without an investigation, you don’t know what actually happened – and haven’t the evidence to prove it.

          Being a shit in a way that does not directly affect one’s representation of a client is not sufficient cause to lose one’s bar license. That appears to be what happened to Ellis in this case.

  7. Savage Librarian says:

    Hey, diddle, diddle,

    The cock and bull fiddle,
    The cow who stumped with the goon,
    The demagogue laughed,
    To see such sport,
    And the snitch ran away with the loon.

  8. esqTJE@23 says:

    Marcy – Your headlines are always good, but this is one of my favs. Just so “telling.”

    As hinted /referenced above, Ellis evidently denied by tweet in the past few days that she — emphatically — DID NOT LIE, er … um did not lie back in late 2020….and, most importantly, that it was a complete (current) lie that she (allegedly) admitted to the Co. bar license tribunal that she lied back then.

    No way did she admit that she lied! That’s a lie! That’s the LEFT telling a lie about her, she said. And this was just after the Co. bar license tribunal released details of Ellis’s case, and said it let her keep her bar license because of no history of bar complaints AND due to her current candor about her past lies…..

    I’m really happy that Ellis was able to CLARIFY — and tell everyone that she didn’t lie — and was certainly not a liar, and therefore she deserved to keep her law license. Good to know those pesky bar license officials are 1) the left and 2) the liars.

    Has anyone shared this info with that entity? Those leftist lying bar licensers will only know they’ve been SCHOOLED by Ellis if someone tells them. Yeah, they’ve been OWNED for sure! Whose the sucker now?

  9. esqTJE@23 says:

    Feel free to critique my attempt at writing sarcasm… Gives me great appreciation for ‘The Shovel’ (Austrailia) , Alexandra Petrie (The WaPo) and the Borowitz Report (New Yorker). Trying to use the word ‘lie’ 10 times in 10 sentences made the task unduly harder. I lost count, so don’t know if I even succeeded at that…

    and apologies if someone beat me to it above. i had to work quite awhile on this, so could not refresh my page without losing my working draft.

  10. narp_13MAR2023_0616hET says:

    Did Ellis really make the same comment word for word on November 30 and December 3 and if so how, did she read from a statement?

    [Welcome to emptywheel. Please choose and use a unique username with a minimum of 8 letters. We are moving to a new minimum standard to support community security. Because you are a new commenter and your username is so short, it will be temporarily changed to match the date/time of your first know comment until you have a new compliant username. Thanks. /~Rayne]

    • Rayne says:

      Marcy provided a link to Jenna Ellis’s stipulation in the very first sentence of this post. Read it, especially page 2. It will answer your question.

      We do expect commenters to make a little effort on their own — we do not spoon feed here. Welcome to emptywheel.

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