Before joining the Trump team, she also self-published a book, The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution: A Guide for Christians to Understand America’s Constitutional Crisis, where she argued that the US Constitution must only be interpreted according to the Bible (as she reads the Bible) and (e.g.) that Obergefell v. Hodges would lead to polygamy and pedophilia becoming accepted – Ellis describes homosexuals as “sinners” whose “conduct is vile and abominable”.
Trump’s Elite Strike Force Team
Ellis rose to national fame after being hired as a senior legal adviser for Trump and his 2020 re-election campaign in November 2019, becoming in effectRudy Giuliani’s protégé and an obvious pick for Trump’s legal team to challenge the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election results, what Ellis called the “elite strike force team” to overturn Biden’s victory.
As a member of the team, Ellis made numerous claims to the effect that Trump really won the election (the “election was stolen and President Trump won by a landslide”) based on no evidence or anything recognizable as a reason – indeed, at the November 2019 press conference, she explicitly declined to present evidence of fraud when asked to do so, responding instead that asking for evidence at the press conference was “fundamentally flawed”. Of course, the complete lack of evidence proved to be an obstacle when the cases were brought before the courts: the Pennsylvania case was dismissed with prejudice given its “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations” that were “unsupported by evidence”; Ellis and Giuliani reacted by claiming that the ruling in fact “helps” the Trump campaign “get expeditiously to the U.S. Supreme Court” though they simultaneously accused the judge, a Federalist Society member, of being “Obama-appointed”.
The lawsuit was later dismissed by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, on the grounds of having provided neither “specific allegations” nor “proof” and because the “claims have no merit”; this time, Giuliani and Ellis promptly condemned the “activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania” (of the three judges, one was appointed by Trump and the two others by George W. Bush), and when they, some days later, appeared in front of the Pennsylvania Senate Majority Policy Committee, they urged Pennsylvania lawmakers to fix what they claimed to be a “corrupted, irredeemably compromised election” by either arranging for a new “special election” or to “direct the manner of your electors” to ensure that the electors would support Trump rather than the candidate who in fact won the election. Ellis and Giuliani subsequently made similar (and similarly quickly dismissed) baseless and silly suggestionsto Arizona lawmakers, including claiming that there were 500,000 votes “that were cast illegally” in Arizona (something Ellis later admitted was a complete fabrication); to Michigan’s House Oversight Committee; and to state lawmakers in Georgia.
When the Trump administration’s Attorney General William Barr stated that the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security had investigated fraud but found nothing, Ellis and Giuliani reacted by accusing Barr and the DoJ of, in effect, having misunderstood what ‘investigating fraud’ means: the DoJ apparently thought it meant finding out what actually transpired when it really means finding support for what Giuliani and Ellis wanted to believe had transpired.
Ellis was also responsible for drafting two memos (blatantly) falsely asserting that vice president Mike Pence could change the results (her grasp of constitutional law is tenuous). The first memo contained a detailed (and insane) plan to overturn the election results, and the second argued that certain provisions of the Electoral Count Act that restricted Pence’s authority to accept or reject selected electors were unconstitutional. As a guest on David Brody’s show, she even managed to maintain a straight face while claiming that such an act “wouldn’t be political” and would create a “clean outcome” for the election (Brody endorsed Ellis’s scheme, of course). In 2022, Ellis was subpoenaed to testify before the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack (the memos would presumably figure prominently in that appearance), but pleaded the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination.
Post Strike Force Team
Despite being obviously and demonstrably wrong, Ellis continued to spread falsehoods about the 2020 election and calling for President Joe Biden to be impeached long afterwards, e.g. on her program Just the Truth and at various QAnon-themed rightwing rallies. She has also promoted conspiracy theories about e.g. the Mar-a-Lago raid. In 2022, she was hired by Doug Mastriano as a senior legal adviser for Mastriano’s 2022 campaign for governor of Pennsylvania, presumably to do the same thing she did for Trump if it became necessary.
In March 2023, Ellis was publicly censured by the chief disciplinary judge of the Colorado Supreme Court for recklessly making 10 public misrepresentations about the 2020 presidential election, including claims that Trump won the election and that the election was stolen from him, something Ellis admitted to. In August 2023, she was among the people indicted in the Georgia election racketeering prosecution for participating in a criminal enterprise to support Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, and in April 2024, she was indicted in Arizona for attempts to overturn the 2020 election in the state. In October 2023, she pleaded guilty to one felony count of “knowingly, willfully and unlawfully” aiding and abetting false statements in writing during a Georgia legislative hearing in December 2020 (the blatant lies included claiming that the Georgia election had included illegal votes from over 10,000 dead people, 2,500+ felons, and 2,400+ unregistered people), and in May 2024 her Colorado law license was suspended for 3 years. (For what it’s worth, Christian nationalist Jarrin Jacksondeclared that by pleading guilty, Ellis was “living the feminist tragedy”, and blamed feminism – “this is how feminism lies to women” – for fooling her into thinking that she, as a woman, could build a successful career rather than a family.)
After the Club Q shooting in November 2022, Ellis complained that the shooting was being exploited to suggest that “Christians hate homosexual and transgender individuals and somehow that ‘hate’ led to the shooting”. Moreover, as Ellis saw it, there is “no evidence at all” that the victims were Christians, so as a consequence, the victims “are now reaping the consequences of having eternal damnation [...] Instead of just the tragedy of what happened to the body, we need to be talking about what happened to the soul and the fact that they are now in eternal separation from our lord and savior Jesus Christ.” She was adamant that she wasn’t hateful or judgmental towards the victims, however; it’s just that if you don’t share her views of things – especially on politics– you can’t be Christian, and then you deserve suffering; and since her belief that those who disagree with her deserve suffering is a genuine belief, it can’t be hateful. As for Israel and Palestine, Ellis was among the fundie wingnuts who heartily welcomed the violence as a sign of the End Times: “Biblical prophecy has been fulfilled, so that the rapture literally could happen at any moment,” said Ellis, adding that good Christians like herself “will return with [Jesus] on white horses.” Just take a moment to reflect on how much mindrot you have to entertain for something like that to fall out of your mouth.
It is worth pointing out, though, that by 2023, Ellis seemed to have returned to her pre-2016 views, arguing e.g. that she couldn’t support Trump “for elected office again” due to Trump’s “malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong ... And the total idolatry that I’m seeing from some of the supporters that are unwilling to put the constitution and the country and the conservative principles above their love for a star is really troubling”. She remains a hateful conspiracy theorist, however: by 2024, Ellis was caught pushing Taylor Swift conspiracy theories on her show (which is hosted by the hate-group the American Family Association and which has featured a number of white nationalists and anti-semitic activists), suggesting, together with Auron MacIntyre and not entirely jokingly, that Swift might replace Biden on the 2024 Ticket – the Democrats are just “so completely just enamored with celebrity,” said Ellis, the former lawyer for a washed-up reality star and celebrity businessman turned president.
Diagnosis: Fundie conspiracy theorist – that’s all, and that’s apparently precisely the desired characteristic for the positions she’s been appointed to.