October 27, 2023 04:21 PM UTC

For Jenna Ellis, Dodging Disbarment Is The New Black

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• by: Colorado Pols

Colorado Newsline’s Quentin Young delivered an update to the ongoing consequences faced by Colorado’s most infamous traffic court lawyer, Donald Trump “Elite Strike Force” legal team member Jenna Ellis, who pled guilty to a felony count in a plea agreement with Fulton County, Georgia prosecutors for her role in the plot to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in that state. Since Ellis’ guilty plea Tuesday, there’s been a great deal of speculation about further sanctions that may be imposed upon her, including the disbarment Ellis narrowly avoided in the spring by agreeing to be censured by Colorado attorney regulators for similar false statements:

Jessica Yates, the state’s attorney regulation counsel, confirmed to Newsline on Thursday that an investigation into Ellis has commenced.

“I can disclose that an investigation has been opened and the matter involving Jenna Ellis’s Georgia conviction is pending with our office,” Yates said in an email.

Yates declined to comment further about the case.

On Tuesday, Yates said an investigation of the kind Ellis faces could result in “discipline, an alternative to discipline, or other action” permitted by relevant rules…

Ellis pled guilty in a case whose underlying facts were part of the investigation by the Colorado Supreme Court Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel that resulted in Ellis’ censure agreement last March. Now that Ellis has pled guilty to a felony, the office is obliged to revisit the case, but disbarment is not automatic–and can presumably take into account Ellis’ expressions of remorse, and cooperation with prosecutors in testimony against higher-ranking defendants in the conspiracy like Rudy Giuliani, ex-CU conservative scholar John Eastman, and the Great Combover himself.

The thing to keep in mind is that Ellis’ plea deal depends completely on Fulton County prosecutors remaining satisfied that she has helped them as much as she was able. If prosecutors decide Ellis isn’t being sufficiently cooperative, Ellis could well find herself facing the full original indictment in court. If Ellis becomes a model state’s witness and completes all the obligations imposed by her sentence, as a first-time offender in Georgia her conviction can be sealed. That along with the chance that Ellis could keep her law license and continue to call herself a “constitutional law attorney” on Newsmax should be enough to guarantee Ellis sings like a canary.

Now that Ellis has pled guilty to a felony crime, it’s true that criminal justice reforms Democrats have championed and Republicans complain mightily about apply to her conviction–a fact conservatives are hypocritically citing to downplay the importance of Trump election co-conspirators pleading guilty to felonies.

In the court of public opinion, there’s no such thing as a sealed record.