It has been a rough spring for Jenna Ellis, the Christian attorney who worked with James Dobson, John MacArthur, Liberty University and Colorado Christian University before joining Donald Trump’s legal team and promoting his falsehoods about the 2020 election.
In April, Ellis, Rudy Giuliani and others who worked for Trump were indicted in Arizona for their roles in a fraudulent effort to have Congress deny Joe Biden’s election victory.
On Tuesday, May 27, Ellis was barred from practicing law in Colorado for three years. The disciplinary order results from her guilty plea in Georgia for trying to overturn 2020 presidential election results.
Colorado law says felons can’t practice law in the state, but the order did cut her some slack, saying, “It is significant that her criminal culpability was due to her conduct as an accessory, not as a principle.”
Ellis once devoted herself to Trump and Christ with equal passion but has since sent mixed messages about her loyalties to Trump.
Colorado previously censured Ellis in March 2023. At that time, she admitted lying and confessed to operating from a “selfish motive” while making “misrepresentations” with “a reckless state of mind.”
Ellis once devoted herself to Trump and Christ with equal passion but has since sent mixed messages about her loyalties to Trump.
Last August, she claimed, “The Democrats and the Fulton County DA are criminalizing the practice of law.”
In another August post, she claimed she was being persecuted and quoted Matthew 5:44: “But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.”
She later explained she was facing political persecution for standing with Trump, not persecution for her faith.
Jenna Ellis speaks with her attorney, Franklin Hogue, after Ellis pled guilty to a felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings, inside Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee’s Fulton County Courtroom, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, Pool)
By October, she was regretful during her tearful Georgia guilty plea: “If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges. … I look back on this whole experience with deep remorse.”
But today, an attorney continues to raise funds for her legal defense in a GiveSendGo campaign that claims she “is being targeted and the government is trying to criminalize the practice of law. Help her fight back and stand for the truth!”
Ellis declined to be interviewed, but she explained her current views in a May letter to the Colorado officials overseeing her discipline: “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. … But I admit that I was overly zealous in believing the ‘facts’ being peddled to support the challenge, which were manufactured and false. Had I done my duty in investigating these alleged facts before promoting them as the truth, I do not believe I would be here. I turned a blind eye to the possibility that senior lawyers for the Trump campaign were embracing claims they knew or should have known were false. I just went along with it. I was wrong.”
Ellis was able to line up a series of prestigious positions with conservative Christian groups and leaders even though she had little legal experience and was fired for poor performance from a job in Weld County, Colo., a decade ago.
None of the leaders and ministries that promoted her over the years has reported or commented on her felony guilty plea and growing legal jeopardy, but some have erased her from their websites.
Ohio’s Southern Baptist-affiliated Cedarville University continues to offer a Jenna Lynn Ellis Award, an endowed scholarship for junior or senior students planning to attend law school, and portrays her as a Christian role model.
The school has declined to comment on the award, which requires that “recipients must demonstrate exceptional integrity in their academic, personal and spiritual life.”
Earlier, James Dobson named Ellis director of the Public Policy Center at Dobson Family Institute, the nonprofit he founded after leaving Focus. It was Dobson who introduced Ellis to his contacts at Fox News, and her appearances on the network brought her to the attention of Trump.
Ellis taught at Colorado Christian University, which incorrectly called her “Dr. Ellis” before correcting the title. Up until her October guilty plea, Ellis was listed as a Fellow in Constitutional Law and Public Policy at CCU’s Centennial Institute, but she has since been delisted.
Ellis also spoke at the Centennial Institute’s Western Conservative Summit in Denver last summer, just months after her censure by a Colorado judge. (This year’s summit has been cancelled amid a leadership shakeup at the Centennial Institute and the departure of former director Jeff Hunt.)
Liberty University’s Standing for Freedom Center named Ellis a senior fellow and she has contributed articles on truth and how to “Defend Freedom from Democratic Party Authoritarians.” Her articles are now attributed to “staff.”
Ellis was one of two attorneys successfully defending John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church against COVID vaccine mandates on behalf of the Thomas More Society, a Catholic legal group. She appeared in The Essential Church, a movie about the case produced by Grace Church. She also worked with Thomas More’s Amistad Project promoting “election integrity.”
Ellis is an alumnus and former faculty member at Summit Ministries, the Christian worldview program for youth. She appeared in the ministry’s podcast, “The Dr. Jeff Show,” to encourage believers “to stand for God’s truth and expect persecution whenever we follow Jesus Christ.”
She hosts “The Jenna Ellis Show” on the Salem Podcast Network, where she focuses on “the rule of law and the importance of integrity in our elections.” She also hosts “Jenna Ellis in the Morning” for the American Family Association’s American Family Radio. Her AFR bio says she is an allied attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom. She has been covering the Trump hush money trial in New York City for both outlets.
She also has appeared on the Christian Broadcasting Network and has condemned government tyranny in a podcast from Concerned Women for America.
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