A third former lawyer to Donald Trump has pleaded guilty in an election subversion case in the US state of Georgia.
Jenna Ellis is the fourth of 19 co-defendants to plead guilty in a deal with Fulton County prosecutors.
She is accused of drafting a letter intended for top Georgia officials declaring that the state’s election results were illegitimate.
Ms Ellis is the second person to plead guilty in less than a week.
Mr Trump is also among those charged in the case. He has pleaded not guilty.
Ms Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony charge of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. She agreed to prosecutors’ recommendations that she face five years of probation, pay a fine of $5,000 (£4,108) in restitution and perform 100 hours of community service.
The 38-year-old also wrote an apology letter to the state of Georgia and will have to testify in all other proceedings related to those charged in the case. In exchange prosecutors dropped Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (Rico) charges she had been facing.
This includes former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whom Ms Ellis has implicated in her plea deal by admitting that she aided and abetted his “false statements” about voter fraud.
Mr Giuliani has pleaded not guilty in the case.
Through tears, Ms Ellis told the court on Tuesday: “If I knew then what I know now I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post election challenges. I look back on this full experience with deep remorse for those failures.”
A former senior legal adviser to the Trump campaign, Ms Ellis was censured by the Colorado Bar Association in March for making “reckless, knowing, or intentional misrepresentations” while working as an attorney to Mr Trump.
In its ruling, the association said Ms Ellis’ statements on behalf of the former president had “undermined the American public’s confidence in the presidential election, violating her duty of candour to the public”.
Source: bbc.com
