Yesterday, attorney Jenna Ellis made an emotional guilty plea in the Georgia election interference RICO case, marking further bad news for former president Donald Trump. Ellis is the third attorney to flip in this case, following in the footsteps of Sidney Powell and Ken Chesebro. The severity of the felony charges has thrown their previous bravado regarding the 2020 election into harsh relief.
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough captured the situation aptly: “This is sort of the ‘Christmas Story’ metaphor that I’m sure every great legal mind across America has been thinking, the BB gun. It’s all a lot of fun until it puts somebody’s eyes out. For a while it was ‘fun’ — they thought ‘we’re getting to own the libs, we’re getting to own the press.'”
The reality, however, is decidedly not fun, as these attorneys are discovering. Facing serious consequences in a courtroom far surpasses making outlandish claims outside of one. As Scarborough put it, “It’s one thing to be making up stories outside of a courtroom, it’s quite another to walk into that courtroom and get five to ten years.”
It’s a sobering turn of events for the lawyers who once fervently challenged the 2020 election results on Trump’s behalf. Serious courtroom consequences have effectively eclipsed their past bluster and posturing.