Former Trump attorney reads tearful apology letter to state of Georgia after plea deal

ATLANTA — Former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis tearfully read an apology letter to the state of Georgia after taking a plea deal in the election interference case.

Ellis and 18 other people, including former President Donald Trump, were facing charges surrounding their alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

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Ellis is the fourth defendant to change their plea to guilty. Scott Hall, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro reached agreements. Fifteen others still facing charges in the case, including Trump.

All four defendants who have pled guilty have been required to write apology letters as part of their plea agreements. Ellis is the first defendant to read a letter in open court.

In her letter, Ellis claimed she was given false information by more seasoned attorneys and said that if she knew what was going to happen, she never would have agreed to represent the former president.

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Here’s her statement in full:

“As an attorney who is also a Christian, I take my responsibilities as a lawyer very seriously and I endeavor to be a person of sound moral and ethical character in all of my dealings.

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In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, I believed that challenging the results on behalf of President Trump should be pursued in a just and legal way. I endeavored to represent my client to the best of my ability. I relied on others, including lawyers with many more years of experience than me to provide me with true and reliable information, especially since my role involved speaking to the media and to the legislators in various states.

What I did not do, but should have done, your honor, is to make sure that the facts that the other lawyers alleged to be true were, in fact, true. In the frenetic pace of attempting to raise challenges to the election in several states, including Georgia, I failed to do my due diligence.

I believe in, and I value election integrity. 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 whole experience with deep remorse. For those failures of mine, I have taken responsibility already before the Colorado bar, who is censuring me, and I now take responsibility before this court and apologize to the people of Georgia.”

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