Today prosecutors obtained another guilty plea in the Georgia RICO case against Donald Trump and others who challenged the apparent result of the 2020 presidential election in that state. The New York Times reports:
Jenna Ellis, a pro-Trump lawyer who amplified former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud as part of what she called a legal “elite strike force team,” pleaded guilty on Tuesday as part of a deal with prosecutors in Georgia.
“Amplifying baseless claims” is not a known criminal offense, and it is something that a great many lawyers have been known to do. Not to mention the New York Times! Nevertheless, Ellis made a tearful confession in court this morning:
“If I knew then what I knew now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges. I look back on this experience with deep remorse,” Ellis said, her voice breaking at times.
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“I relied on others, including lawyers with many more years of experience than I, to provide me with true and reliable information … 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 were, in fact, true,” Ellis said.
So what did she actually plead guilty to doing?
During a public hearing Tuesday morning in Atlanta, Ms. Ellis pleaded guilty to a charge of aiding and abetting false statements and writings.
The statute in question is O.C.G.A. 16-10-20:
A person who knowingly and willfully falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact; makes a false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or makes or uses any false writing or document, knowing the same to contain any false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry, in any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of state government or of the government of any county, city, or other political subdivision of this state shall, upon conviction thereof, be punished by a fine of not more than $1,000.00 or by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than five years, or both.
Ellis pled guilty to aiding and abetting the violation of this statute. It sounds like the relevant clause is “makes a false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation…in any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of state government….” In general, it is not a crime to make a false statement, and I don’t think a statute construed that broadly would be constitutional. I am not sure what “matter” was “within the jurisdiction…of state government” for purposes of this case. The 2020 election? Litigation over the 2020 election?
In any event, it appears that the false statements, the making of which Ellis supposedly aided and abetted, were statements to the effect that there had been widespread fraud in Georgia in the 2020 election:
Their false statements included baseless claims of massive voter fraud – including through mail-in ballots, and with thousands of supposedly illegal votes from felons, minors and “dead people.”
Were these statements actually false? Does the prosecution claim that there was no voter fraud? That no mail-in ballots were illegally cast? That no illegal votes were cast on behalf of felons or dead people? Presumably not. The falsity apparently resides in whether any such fraud was “massive,” or enough to reverse the outcome of the election in Georgia. But in the immediate aftermath of the election, no one knew how extensive the fraud was. That was a matter for proof in a post-election contest.
The Georgia prosecution is intensely political, even compared with the other criminal cases in which Donald Trump is embroiled. It seems intended to chill apparently losing Republican candidates from pursuing legal remedies, as, for example, Al Gore did in 2000. And it has elements of a Soviet show trial, with Ellis tearfully confessing her alleged sins for the benefit of the press.
It is a dirty business, and it isn’t over yet.
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