Jenna Ellis
Former President Donald Trump’s lawyer Jenna Ellis and nine other attorneys received ethics complaints for their participation in the wave of litigation seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, an advocacy group announced on Monday.
Sent to courts, bar associations and disciplinary committees across the United States, the wave of 10 complaints was the debut action taken by the non-profit group The 65 Project against attorneys they describe as “Big Lie lawyers.”
Aside from Ellis, the other nine attorneys facing complaints for their efforts either representing Trump or supporting his election-subversion bids are:
- Cleta Mitchell, who participated in Trump’s phone call urging Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to “find 11,780 votes” to tip the election in his favor;
- Former Sinclair Media Group talking head Boris Epshteyn, who reportedly had a phone call with Trump on the morning of Jan. 6;
- Former U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova, who said that Trump’s ex-cybersecurity czar Chris Krebs should be “taken out at dawn and shot” for finding the 2020 election was secure;
- Texas attorney Paul Davis, who filed and dropped his so-called “Gondor” lawsuit seeking the wholesale replacement of two branches of the U.S. federal government;
- Georgia lawyer William Calhoun, who allegedly boasted about storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6;
- Fellow Peach State lawyers William Carver and Daryl Moody, who claimed to be Trump “electors” in Georgia, even though President Joe Biden won there handily by more than 12,000 votes;
- Fake Wisconsin elector Andrew Hitt, who purported to represent Trump voters in a state Biden won by more than 20,600 votes;
- Trump’s lawyer in Wisconsin Jim Troupis, whom a state Supreme Court justice roasted for bringing a lawsuit that “smacks of racism.”
The 65 Project, so-named after the number of lawsuits seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election, claim that initial wave of complaints represents a fraction of what they have plan. The group announced plans to target a “list of 111 lawyers across 26 states” for possible disbarment for “violating their oaths as officers of the court and failing to follow ethical rules.”
Several pro-Trump lawyers already have been facing blowback for their participation in post-2020 election litigation. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani had his law license suspended in New York and Washington, D.C., following his disastrous turn seeking to overturn Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania. In August, a federal judge in Michigan sanctioned nine lawyers associated with the so-called “Kraken” lawsuit there, including Sidney Powell, Lin Wood and others.
“This lawsuit represents a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process,” U.S. District Judge Linda Parker wrote in her opinion and order at the time. “It is one thing to take on the charge of vindicating rights associated with an allegedly fraudulent election. It is another to take on the charge of deceiving a federal court and the American people into believing that rights were infringed, without regard to whether any laws or rights were in fact violated. This is what happened here.”
Judge Parker referred all of the lawyers to their respective disciplinary committees for potential discipline or disbarment. The lawyer who pursued that sanctions order—the city of Detroit’s lawyer David Fink—is now a consulting counsel for The 65 Project. So is his son, Nathan Fink. The group’s managing director is Yale Law School graduate Michael Teter.
Describing itself as bipartisan, The 65 Project appears to lean Democratic. The first member of its advisory board, former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), served as a majority and minority during his decades-long career in the U.S. Senate. Democratic Party activist David Brock is a senior advisor.
Read the ethics complaint against Ellis, below:
[image via screengrab/Centennial Institute/YouTube]
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
Follow Law&Crime:
