Posts about Jenna Ellis
Not even for members of the MAGA crowd does a reasonable explanation exist for how it came to be that Trump and his reelection campaign made it appear on paper that Jenna Ellis was serving as a senior legal advisor to Trump and as counsel for his reelection campaign while they were actually using her to spread their falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election. Among the facts demonstrating that such a reasonable explanation does not exist are the following:
Her repeated and brutal condemnations of Trump and the MAGA crowd in 2015 and 2016 were well known as demonstrated by the 11-18-20 CNN article entitled “Trump’s legal adviser Jenna Ellis in 2016 called him an ‘idiot’ and said his supporters didn’t care about ‘facts or logic’”. Those condemnations had also included that neither Trump nor the MAGA crowd could be trusted.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/18/politics/kfile-jenna-ellis-2016-trump-comments/index.html
2. Unlike other Trump attorneys, she did eventually stipulate and agree that spreading those kinds of falsehoods was misconduct for which she should be disciplined. Obviously. the extent of her loyalty to Trump could not be trusted to stretch very far when push came to shove.
3. Even a Fox News article had concluded that her falsehoods had “helped fuel the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/former-trump-lawyer-censured-falsehoods-election
More of those kinds of facts can be found in the 12-3-2020 New York Times article entitled “How Is Trump’s Lawyer Jenna Ellis ‘Elite Strike Force’ Material?’”, on Wikipedia, and in other articles that are referenced below.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/us/politics/jenna-ellis-trump.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenna_Ellis
Among those additional facts are the following:
She never had any pertinent qualifications or employment experience that could back up her false claim that she was a “constitutional law attorney”.
In 2003 she enrolled at Cedarville University, a private Baptist university in Cedarville, Ohio, and subsequently transferred to Colorado State University in order to study journalism. She did not receive a J.D. degree from the University of Richmond School of Law until 2011.
With that background, she was able to find employment in August 2012 as a deputy district attorney in Weld County, Colorado, a rural county in northeastern Colorado, and worked on traffic and other misdemeanor cases. However, she was fired in the first quarter of 2013 from that entry level position because, according to documents from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, she “failed to meet the employer’s expectations” and “made mistakes on cases the employer believes she should not have made”, and for her “unsatisfactory performance” even though her supervisor was Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, who subsequently became chairman of the Colorado Republican Party and a U.S. Congressman
https://coloradosun.com/2020/12/15/jenna-ellis-weld-county-district-attorneys-office/
4. Ellis then went into private practice with law firms based in Northern Colorado where she defended clients in state courts in matters pertaining to assault, domestic abuse, prostitution, and theft and may have worked on cases involving immigration and tenancy.
5. However, only sparse court records exist of her involvement in state court cases, and court records do not show her having taken part in any election law cases, any federal judiciary cases, or any cases in the United States district courts or courts of appeals.
6, In 2015 she became employed as an affiliate faculty member of Colorado Christian University and later as an assistant professor of legal studies until her departure in 2018. During that employment she taught political science and pre-law to undergraduates and could not have been a professor of any kind of law because that college did not have a law school.
7. In 2018 she left Colorado Christian University to become employed by the James Dobson Family Institute as its director of its newly formed public policy division, the Dobson Policy Center. The announcement of Dr. James Dobson and the James Dobson Family Institute (JDFI) that she would fill that new position not only claimed that she was a “constitutional law attorney” even though she had never served any client in that capacity. It also claimed that she had “a passion for Christ” and her talents included providing excellent “legal analysis”.
8. The James Dobson Family Institute made those statements in that announcement even though approximately two years later she not only began spreading of falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election that she would later stipulate and agree was misconduct for which she should be disciplined. She had also written the memo that then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows emailed to Vice President Mike Pence's top aide on New Year's Eve that had detailed a multi-step strategy for undoing President Joe Biden's election victory by Pence sending back the electoral votes from six battleground states that Trump falsely claimed he had won. That memo exemplifies the kind of excellent “legal analysis” she was able to provide.
9. It appears that both Dr. James Dobson and the James Dobson Family Institute are among the evangelical members of the MAGA crowd, and thus they would also be among those that she had condemned in 2015 and 2016 because they could not be trusted and they did not care about either facts or logic.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/18/politics/kfile-jenna-ellis-2016-trump-comments/index.html
10. Her employment by Colorado Christian University and the James Dobson Family Institute helps explains why she had so little experience actually working as attorney or handing any pertinent kinds of cases.
11. When she was subpoenaed in January 2022 and called to testify before the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, she pled the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, which is regarded by members of the MAGA crowd, their leaders, and their idols to be the equivalent of pleading guilty. Indeed she did effectively enter a plea of guilty when she subsequently admitted in her written stipulation and agreement that her spreading of falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election was misconduct for which she should be disciplined.
12. She further demonstrated the extent of her “passion for Christ” and the kind of Christianity she had learned from Cedarville University, Colorado Christian University, and the James Dobson Family Institute by mocking 81-year-old Mitch McConnell with a video of a tortoise tumbling down a set of stairs that she posted on Twitter when he had suffered a concussion and was required to remain in the hospital because he had tripped and fell at a private dinner at a Washington DC hotel. Indeed, she had similarly mocked an 82-year-old Paul Pelosi when he had his skull fractured by a hammer.
She was never a good attorney or a good Christian. Instead, she would choose to spread falsehoods and mock old men because they had been seriously injured whenever that served her purposes. Thus, she was much like the members of the MAGA crowd she had condemned because they could not be trusted and they did not care about either facts or logic.