There’s no honor among thieves. So why am I starting to feel sorry for Jenna Ellis, a lawyer who was part of Donald Trump’s “Elite Strike Force”?
She was recently charged as a co-conspirator with Trump in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. And yet, the ex-president has hung her out to dry. She’s become an apostate in TrumpWorld.
You see, she committed the mortal sin of disloyalty to Trump—she’s supporting Ron DeSantis in the 2024 Republican primary. Though she’s not the only ex-Trump associate who’s gone for the Florida governor (or otherwise run afoul of Trump), she might end up paying the highest price.
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“Trump hires a lot of traitors, apparently, since almost everybody he has ever hired has been accused [by him] of being one at some point,” wrote David Strom in a scathing piece posted at the conservative site HotAir.
In lieu of Trump’s financial support, Ellis, who previously admitted to violating ethics rules regarding statements she made about the 2020 election, is crowdfunding her legal defense. At the time of this writing, she is approaching $50,000—a sum that might just cover a couple of day’s worth of legal representation. Maybe.
This is all par for the course for a guy known to cheat at golf, stiff contractors, flip-flop on paying legal fees for rally goers who punch protesters, and promise “food for everyone” before dashing without dining. His flunkies are always stuck with his never-ending tab.
What else would Ellis expect? But again, I can’t help but feel a tad sorry for her. Before she joined Trump’s legal team, Ellis was “a young Colorado attorney practicing in county courts, defending clients in domestic-abuse cases and teaching legal classes at a local Christian university” who, The Wall Street Journal noted, “handled traffic cases and other misdemeanors…”
It’s easy to understand why Ellis was seduced into Trump’s orbit. She got to appear on TV and worked alongside “America’s Mayor,” Rudy Giuliani, to defend the President of The United States of America. For a young conservative lawyer, it’s hard to aim much higher than that.
But how do you explain Rudy Giuliani, Ellis’ senior “partner in crime” who claims to have pioneered the use of RICO back when he was a prosecutor, making the same rookie mistake?
In case you missed it, Giuliani, who is already in dire financial straits due to his various other legal bills, was also indicted in Georgia this week.
He reportedly made a personal visit to Mar-a-Lago to beg Trump for help. According to CNN, Trump “didn’t seem very interested,” although he verbally agreed to cover some of the costs (whatever that means).
The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman explained to CNN that Trump “didn’t want Giuliani paid unless Giuliani delivered on his promises, and obviously that didn’t happen.” (Presumably, Trump would only cover Giuliani’s legal fees if the attempted coup worked—in which case, Rudy wouldn’t have any legal fees.)
You don’t have to be a former mayor or legendary prosecutor to realize that you’d be left holding the proverbial bag.
“What happened to Rudy?” is one of the great questions of our time. Theories abound: he drinks too much, he needs a wife to keep him in line, etc. But a definitive explanation for the radical transformation doesn’t exist.
Recently, however, Giuliani biographer Andrew Kirtzman shed some light on this puzzling question. During an interview with MSNBC, Kirtzman noted that “Donald Trump literally took [Giuliani] into Mar-a-Lago right after his [presidential primary] failure in 2008 and kind of shielded Giuliani…”
One could imagine Trump occasionally practicing random acts of kindness—albeit in ways that do not involve him giving away his own money. (In keeping with this theory, to defray Rudy’s legal bills, Trump has “agreed to stop by two fundraisers for Giuliani.”)
Still, we’re left wondering: How did the guy who channeled Winston Churchill in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks later turn into the guy who held a press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping?
And why would the guy brave and canny enough to take on the mob be susceptible to The Donald’s charms?
“Donald Trump has a superpower: He gets people to believe he gives a crap about them and that if they work hard for his interests and exhibit loyalty, he will do the same for them in return,” writes Markos Moulitsas at Daily Kos. “And—this is key—Trump gets them to ignore the legion of broken, unpaid, and abandoned former contractors, employees, and allies he’s consistently left behind. Somehow, he convinces the next suckers that they’re different.”
Trump has honed gaslighting to an art form.
Ellis and Giuliani probably thought the rules didn’t apply to them—that they were different from the other marks floundering in Trump’s wake—that Trump was their friend. Presumably, they thought the con they helped perpetuate against the American public was limited to grifting other people. They thought wrong.
