PHOENIX — A former attorney for the Trump 2020 campaign has agreed to cooperate in prosecuting 11 fake electors and their allies in Arizona in exchange for having conspiracy, forgery and seven other felony charges dropped against her over efforts to overturn the results.
In a new agreement, Jenna Ellis said she will not only give interviews to investigators from the state Attorney General’s Office but also testify wherever they want, including grand jury proceedings and any civil or criminal trials. She also agreed to turn over any documents she has related to the probe.
Ellis played a key role in arguing in Arizona and elsewhere that there was fraud in the 2020 race and that Trump should have been elected.
She specifically worked with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to convince lawmakers in Arizona to move to overturn the election results. That includes meeting with then-House Speaker Rusty Bowers who refused to call a special legislative hearing.
Instead, Giuliani and Ellis then were involved in a legislative “hearing’’ at a downtown Phoenix hotel where they laid out the case for overturning the results, complete with Trump calling in to Ellis’ cell phone and her broadcasting his comments. They also had separate meetings with Republican lawmakers.
This also relates to the indictment of 11 Republicans who submitted documents to Congress that Trump had won the popular vote in Arizona — he actually lost by more than 10,000 — and that it is their electoral votes that should be counted. The indictment charges that Ellis encouraged then-Vice President Mike Pence, who was presiding over the Jan. 6, 2021 congressional counting of the electoral votes, to accept the fake votes of the GOP electors.
Attorney General Kris Mayes told Capitol Media Services she believes that the information she will provide is crucial to getting convictions in the remaining cases.
“Ms. Ellis was close to Rudy Giuliani and the pressure campaign,’’ the attorney general said.
“She is very familiar with what Rudy Giuliani and other national figures were doing during that time frame,’’ Mayes said, meaning the period right from right after the election to the effort to undermine the counting of the electoral votes. “We think she bolsters our case.’’
All the other defendants have pleaded innocent. Mayes said a trial is unlikely to start before next year.
Trump himself was not charged but was listed in the April indictment as “Unindicted Co-conspirator 1.’’
Ellis released a statement Monday afternoon from her attorneys saying they are glad the indictment has gone away.
“She was not involved in the so-called ‘fake elector’ scheme,’’ said Matt Brown and Matt Melito in the prepared statement. “Jenna was originally told she was not a target and her cooperation is her continued willingness to tell the truth.’’
That’s true, Mayes conceded. But she said the ultimate decision of who to charge — and who not to charge — rests with members of the state grand jury.
“We deferred to the grand jury,’’ Mayes said of the panel’s decision to include Ellis among those who they said should face the nine-count indictment.
Still, the attorney general said that decision did not occur in a vacuum.
“We presented a case to the grand jury,’’ she said of attorneys from her office.
“The grand jury made decisions about these defendants,’’ Mayes continued. “And that included Jenna Ellis.’’
But it is solely up to Mayes whether to pursue those charges.
Mayes also defended the agreement that allows Ellis to walk away, without facing any charges in Arizona, if she cooperates.
That is different than what happened in Georgia where Ellis pleaded guilty in Georgia last year to a single felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. That resulted in dismissal of various other felonies, including soliciting the violation of oath by a public officer as well as violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
In entering the plea there, Ellis told the judge she acted after relying on information from other attorneys who had more experience.
“What I did not do but should have done, your honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true we in fact true,’’ she said.
She was sentenced to five years’ probation and ordered to pay $5,000 in restitution.
Mayes said that, given the Georgia charges were based on the same conspiracy alleged here in Arizona, there was no need to seek additional punishment.
“We felt it was in the interests of justice to go ahead and strike this agreement with her, especially given how significant it is to advancing our case,’’ the attorney general said.
While Ellis was involved in the national events leading up to efforts to overturn the election, less clear is her role in actually convincing those 11 Republicans to submit a fake document claiming they were the rightful electors. Mayes would not say on Monday how Ellis’ testimony could help secure convictions against them.
“I’m not going to get into those details right now except to say that she has provided our office a significant amount of information that we think is going to be important to prosecuting the entire case,’’ she said.
She isn’t the first of those involved in the events following the 2020 election to agree to work with Mayes.
Kenneth Chesebro, who had been a legal adviser to the Trump campaign, already had met with investigators in Arizona even before the indictment was issued in April.
He was not among those charged. And Mayes already has put him on a list of witnesses she intends to call when the case goes to trial.
Mayes said she believes that Ellis “provides additional and different information’’ from what Chesebro can add.
Also on the witness list for Mayes is former Gov. Doug Ducey whom Trump and his allies tried to pressure not to certify the election results. That included the governor very visibly ignoring a call from Trump during the certification, silencing his phone as it played the ringtone of “Hail to the Chief.’’
While Ducey said he later returned the call — he would not detail the conversation — that clearly didn’t satisfy Trump.
In calling in to that unofficial hearing at a Phoenix hotel, Trump railed about Ducey’s actions.
“He didn’t have to sign it,’’ the president said as Ellis held her cell phone up to a microphone.
“I say, why would he sign when you have these incredible hearings going on that’s showing such corruption and such horrible fraud on the American people and the people of Arizona,’’ Trump said. “So you have to figure out, what’s that all about with Ducey. He couldn’t go fast enough.”
