Jenna Ellis, the claimed Constitutional lawyer who coined the moniker “Elite Special Force Team” for the lawyers working to disenfranchise voters in a delusional effort to ensconce Donald Trump in the White House, may have violated ethical standards and endangered the tax status of the religious liberty organization that employs her, the Washington Post reports.
Ellis is listed as “special counsel” on the website of the conservative Thomas More Society. Until recently, she was also listed as member of the “Leadership and Advisory Board” for the Amistad Project, a group affiliated with the Thomas More Society but which is reportedly acting independently in bringing lawsuits on behalf of the failed Trump campaign. Ellis claims the Project used her name without her permission.
Ellis apparently did not disclose her association with the Amistad Project in Court documents while she was representing the Trump Campaign as a member of the ESFT. Such a connection should be disclosed in a court case to avoid potential conflict-of-interests and to provide transparency to the Court.
Additionally, Ellis’s connections with the groups jeopardize the tax-exempt status of the Thomas More Society: a tax-exempt non-profit cannot endorse political candidates without losing their tax-exempt status.
The Amistad Project is “dedicated to election integrity,” the Thomas More Society claims, not a specific Party or candidate. However, the Amistad Project’s lawsuits this election cycle have all been in support of Ellis and her efforts to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters and elevate the efforts of the Trump campaign, with many of the lawsuits parallelling Ellis’s own arguments.
Ellis’s roles with those organizations leads to potential coordination between the claimed non-partisan non-profit organizations, which call into question the motivations of the use of the Society’s resources.
The Trump campaign’s ESFT has been overwhelmingly unsuccessful in their legal efforts, having won only a single case out of more than 50 filed, and that case was inconsequential in the outcome of the election.
Ellis has collected more than $160,000 in fees from the Trump campaign since the beginning of October, according to reports. Her profile on the Amistad Project lists her as a “Constitutional Law Attorney,” but she’s never taught at a law school nor has she litigated an election law case that has been heard before a court. She is a former deputy district attorney in Colorado and a former assistant professor of legal studies in a pre-law program at Colorado Christian University, a college without a law school.