Aa lawyer who played a major role in the efforts to keep Donald J. Trump in power after his 2020 election loss, reached a cooperation agreement on Monday as part of a deal with prosecutors leading an election interference case in Arizona. Jenna Ellis is the first of the 18 defendants in the case to reach such an agreement. She already pleaded guilty to a felony last year in a similar case in Georgia. In Arizona, nine felony charges against her were dropped in exchange for her cooperation and an agreement to testify truthfully. “This agreement represents a significant step forward in our case,” Kris Mayes, the Arizona attorney general, said in a statement. Referring to Ellis, she added: “Her insights are invaluable and will greatly aid the state in proving its case in court. As I stated when the initial charges were announced, I will not allow American democracy to be undermined — it is far too important.
Democratic prosecutors in five states have brought criminal charges against Trump allies related to efforts to overturn the 2020 results, with the cases in Georgia and Arizona being the most expansive. Mayes brought charges in April, and a trial is not expected until next year at the earliest. In June, the Arizona defendants filed an initial challenge, seizing on a new state law aimed at curbing litigation and prosecutions involving political figures. Ellis was called a senior legal adviser by the 2020 Trump campaign. But she referred to herself as being part of an “elite strike force team” of lawyers, and often appeared with Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer at the time, as both advanced false claims about the election. By last year, when she was tearfully pleading guilty in an Atlanta courtroom, Ellis expressed regret and said she had failed to do her “due diligence” in vetting the Trump campaign’s claims of election fraud. “If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these postelection challenges,” she told an Atlanta judge in court. “I look back on this experience with deep remorse.”
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