Last fall, Kris Mayes, Arizona’s Democratic state attorney general, told CNN that her office was overseeing a “robust” investigation related to Republicans’ fake electors scheme after the 2020 presidential election. We learned months later that she was quite sincere about this: An Arizona grand jury indicted 18 people in April — 11 fake electors and seven Donald Trump aides.
There were some high-profile names among those charged, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis.
On Monday, one of them flipped. NBC News reported:
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes’ office announced Monday that Jenna Ellis, a former Trump attorney and one of the 18 defendants in the Arizona “fake electors” case stemming from the 2020 election, is cooperating with the prosecution. Ellis signed the cooperation agreement Monday morning, according to the announcement, which said prosecutors are dropping the charges against her.
The good news for Ellis is that she’s no longer facing nine felony charges, and she no longer has to worry about ending up behind bars. The good news for prosecutors is that they now have a cooperating witness with key insights to share about the underlying electoral scheme.
If these circumstances sound at all familiar, it’s not your imagination. In fact, it was last fall when Ellis pleaded guilty in Georgia to aiding and abetting false statements. The lawyer expressed what she described as “deep remorse” for her wrongdoing, adding that she shouldn’t have represented the former president in the case at all.
As part of her agreement, the former Team Trump lawyer agreed to, among other things, provide evidence to prosecutors in Georgia — and as it turned out, she had information to share.
It stands to reason that prosecutors in Arizona hope to benefit from a similar arrangement.
There are legal experts who can speak to this with more authority than I can, but recent history suggests that after one defendant flips, others often follow. With this in mind, Ellis might be the first person to flip in the Arizona case, but there’s no reason to assume she’ll be the last.
As for Ellis’ broader trajectory, the attorney has followed an unusual path. It might seem like ancient history, but in the 2016 campaign, she was not a Trump fan. As regular readers might recall, the Republican lawyer repeatedly described the then-candidate as an “idiot,” adding that she considered him “unethical, corrupt, lying, criminal, dirtbag.” Ellis even took aim at Trump’s supporters, saying they didn’t care about “facts or logic.” She later changed her mind. In fact, despite her rhetorical record, Ellis actually joined Trump’s legal team, becoming a rather enthusiastic proponent, not only of her client’s lies about his 2020 defeat, but also of radical tactics that would have allowed the then-president to remain in office despite the election results. Last year, she came full circle, declaring, “I simply can’t support him for elected office again.” Ellis added, “Why I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.” If Trump starts going after Ellis by way of his social media platform, at least we’ll know why. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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