May 29, 2024 10:53 AM UTC

Jenna Ellis Finally Loses Colorado Law License--For Three Years

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• by: Colorado Pols

As 9NEWS reported yesterday evening, former 2020 coup plotter and member of Donald Trump’s “Elite Strike Force” legal team that sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election Jenna Ellis accepted a second disciplinary agreement from the Colorado Supreme Court Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel following Ellis’ guilty plea to a felony charge in Georgia last fall. Pursuant to that agreement, Ellis has lost her license to practice law in Colorado for three years:

In addition to her three-year suspension, Ellis has to pay $5,000 to the Georgia secretary of state, complete 100 hours of community service and write an apology letter to the residents of Georgia.

In a letter submitted as part of the settlement agreement, Ellis says the “Stop The Steal” campaign was “cynical” and misleading, while also claiming there are bad actors on both sides.

“I do not do this as a political calculation,” Ellis says. “I was wrong to be involved.”

She goes on to say that she initially believed her actions were in good faith but now admits that she was “overly zealous in believing the ‘facts’ being peddled to support the challenge, which were manufactured and false.” She encourages others who may still believe the election was stolen to consider changing their position.

Colorado Newsline:

“I wish to express my deep remorse and to acknowledge the harm my misconduct caused,” [Ellis] wrote.

She said she did not in late 2020 intentionally spread falsehoods about the election.

“In the beginning of my involvement I genuinely believed that the election challenges were made in good faith — basically a repeat of a Bush v. Gore situation, not an effort to undermine the public faith in the integrity of elections,” she wrote. “But I admit that I was overly zealous in believing the ‘facts’ being peddled to support the challenge, which were manufactured and false … I was wrong.”

Ellis’ three-year suspension from practicing law will not automatically end. Ellis will be required to apply for reinstatement of her law license in which she’ll be required to show proof of “rehabilitation.” Ellis faces new charges in Arizona related to her work to undermine election results in that state, so it’s safe to say regulators will have more misconduct to consider when the time comes. It wasn’t just the felony conviction in Georgia that prompted the second complaint against Ellis’ law license, but the new instances of misconduct uncovered in the Georgia investigation that warranted further punishment.

Which leaves us all now to debate the question: is a three-year suspension of Ellis’ law license sufficient to protect the integrity of practicing law in Colorado? That’s a little different than simply asking if the punishment fits the crime, though it’s the same general principle applied to the higher standards the legal profession supposedly demands. Ellis claims that she was relying on the false statements made by “senior” attorneys like Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, who are both in the process of being permanently disbarred in their respective states. But Ellis also wrote her own legal memo outlining a plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and the bottom line is that as an attorney it’s Ellis’ own responsibility to fact-check what she personally asserts is true.

Jenna Ellis strained the limits of credibility as a licensed attorney, but paid something less than the ultimate vocational price. With a majority of Republicans still convinced that the lies Ellis has now repeatedly admitted to are in fact true, we can’t call this a fully satisfying outcome. If Ellis ever wants to practice law again anywhere, Ellis should at least be required to put as much effort into publicly debunking the lies about the 2020 presidential election as she did publicly spreading them.

If that doesn’t happen, the only way Ellis should ever see the inside of a courtroom again is as a defendant.