Jenna Ellis, a Colorado native and former lawyer for then-President Donald Trump in 2020, will not be allowed to practice law in Colorado for at least three years under an agreement approved Tuesday by the Colorado Supreme Court.
Ellis, who is from Longmont, had faced the possibility of total disbarment after pleading guilty in October to a felony in Georgia related to efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss there. Daysha Young, a prosecutor in that case, told the court there that Ellis had “aided and abetted” two of Trump’s attorneys as they falsely told Georgia state senators that tens of thousands of illegal votes were cast in the state.
Colorado’s governing body for attorneys previously had censured Ellis after she admitted making repeated false statements about the 2020 presidential election.
In the agreement, lawyers for Ellis and the state of Colorado acknowledged that “while disbarment is the presumptive sanction for (Ellis’) misconduct, it is significant that her criminal culpability was due to her conduct as an accessory, not as a principal.” That, combined with her letter of remorse, may have saved her from total disbarment.
In her letter, Ellis wrote that she “turned a blind eye” to the possibility that senior lawyers for the Trump campaign could be sharing false information as part of a “cynical ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign.”
“In (accepting the suspension), I will hopefully encourage others who may still believe that the election was ‘stolen’ to consider changing their position,” Ellis wrote. “Everything that has come out since has not proven that claim.”
John Michael Richilano, Ellis’ lawyer, told The Denver Post that “unlike others in the Trump orbit, she stepped forward and took responsibility and told the truth.”
“She did this at considerable personal cost,” he added, “having received threatening emails, texts and tweets, also of the obscene variety. … She gratefully accepted suspension of her license understanding her role and realizing, after the fact, that there was a lot of untruths being advanced on behalf of the former president.”
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