Jenna Ellis' timeline sinks Donald Trump's case: legal analyst
November 14, 2023
A pair of legal experts on Monday night argued that the timeline presented by former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis' testimony paints a damning portrait of former President Donald Trump's mindset.
Ellis testified to prosecutors after her guilty plea that the former president intended to stay in the White House at all costs, according to what an aide told her.
Gwen Keyes, a former district attorney in Georgia's DeKalb County, told MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell on Monday that this will be of great use to prosecutors looking to help establish Trump's criminal intent.
"That is a key element of every one of the crimes that is listed in the indictment," she said. "That being that the defendants knew that they were perpetrating a lie, and so this goes right to the heart of that."
In her testimony, Ellis claimed that Trump aide Dan Scavino told her that they were going to refuse to leave.
Former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal, who was also a guest on O'Donnell's show, noted this statement can be used by prosecutors to establish intent because it shows Trump didn't care if he won or lost, he was determined to stay in power regardless.
What's more, argued Katyal, the timing of Scavino's statement appears particularly troublesome for Trump.
"Now, you have from quite nearly the horse's mouth saying, Jenna Ellis, who's not like, you know Hakeem Jeffries or some lefty, she was in on all of the coup plots and conspiracy, Trumpista as anyone," said Katyal. "This is where the date is really important, Lawrence. Jenna Ellis said that that conversation with Scavino happened on Dec 19th. That's after the safe harbor deadline to resolve state election disputes and certify the election, which was Dec 8th. It's also after the date that the electors met to cast their vote, which is Dec 14th."
But the most important date, he said, is that it fell after Dec. 11, 2020, when Trump lost at the United States Supreme Court.
"You might remember, that Jenna Ellis testified before the Jan. 6 Committee, that at a holiday party, Donald Trump said to Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, 'I don't want people to know that we lost. It's embarrassing, figure it out. We need to figure it out.' So, all of this together paints a really damaging picture for Donald Trump. I can say that I have never been to any Christmas parties where a topic of conversation is whether a sitting president is going to completely disregard the results of an election, but evidently, that is what happened in the Trump White House."
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