Former attorney not supporting Trump reelection over ‘malignant’ tendency to say he’s never wrong

Former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis appears to have turned on the former president, saying she can’t back him again for the 2024 election after supporting him in his previous two campaigns.

“I know [Trump] well as a friend and a former boss, I have great love and respect for him personally,” Ellis said on her radio show Thursday. “I simply can’t support him for elected office again. Why I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant, narcissistic tendency to say that he’s never done anything wrong.”

Ellis is one of 18 people charged alongside Trump in a sprawling Georgia racketeering case over claims the former president led an attempt to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. Ellis represented the Trump campaign in legal challenges to 2020 results across the country.

She insulted Trump before the 2016 election, calling him an “idiot” and a “bully” before turning face and backing his 2016 and 2020 campaigns. Since being indicted in Georgia, she has complained that the president has not offered to cover the defendants’ legal fees.

In the radio show, first reported by Media Matters, Ellis also went after Trump supporters. She said they are practicing “idolatry” and are putting Trump ahead of their real values.

She said she chose to distance herself from Trump due to “some of the total idolatry that I’m seeing from some of his supporters that are unwilling to put the Constitution and the country and the conservative principle above their love of a star.” 

“It is really troubling, and I think we do need to as Americans and as conservatives and particularly as Christians, take this very seriously and understand where are we putting our vote,” she continued.

Ellis has admitted to misrepresenting claims about 2020 election fraud, including accepting a legal censure from the Colorado State Bar, but has defended her actions.

“The Democrats and the Fulton County DA are criminalizing the practice of law. I am resolved to trust the Lord,” she wrote when she was arrested last month.