So, today another lawyer has copped a plea down in Georgia admitting that the whole ‘stop the steal’ program in the Peach State was nothing but a bundle of lies. In this instance, it’s Jenna Ellis who shot her mouth off every chance she got back after the 2020 election to spread the nonsense about how the guy who deserved to still be President was sitting on his ass in Mar-a-Lago, waiting to make a triumphant return to D.C.
Ellis may have been an attorney working on the Trump campaign, but there isn’t an alt-right media venue that she didn’t miss in what was almost a daily blast of bullshit that she peddled after the 2020 election came to an end. Back in March, she was formally censured by a judge in Colorado for making false claims about the election, and to quote the actual censure document itself, Ellis “made ten public misrepresentations in November and December 2020 in her capacity as counsel for the then-President’s reelection campaign and as personal counsel to the then-President, while also advertising her status as a lawyer.”
Now hold off for a minute while I give you a little perspective on this case. Back in 1988 or 1989 I happened to be out in the Hamptons and bumped into Meade Esposito, who had been the head of the Brooklyn Democratic Party when I was press officer for the New York State Assembly in the early 1980’s.
Esposito had been forced to retire when he was convicted of bribing a New York member of Congress, Mario Biaggi, in return for Biaggi steering a lucrative government contract to an insurance company owned by Esposito and his son.
Esposito greeted me warmly and when I told him I was sorry that he had run into his legal problems he said, “Mikey, there was nuttin’ I could do. It was a high-profile case.”
I love that phrase – high-profile case. What could be more high profile than a case involving an attempt to overturn the results of a Presidential election? What could be more high profile than telling people in various ‘battleground’ states to put together a bunch of fake Electoral College ballots and send them to Washington, D.C?
It’s one thing if some nice, dopey guy or gal went along with this scheme because it gave them something to do plus, you might actually get to meet the ‘real’ President of the United States after he got back into office and invited you to the White House for a hot dog and a coke.
Most of the men and women who have been indicted in Georgia and Michigan are just nice, average bumbling folks. Some hot-shot lawyer who works for the President tells them that what they are doing is legal and okay, they’re going to believe what they’ve been told because after all, it’s not every day you have a chance to work with someone who gives legal advice to the President of the United States! Right?
But when it comes to Jenna Ellis and Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, never mind Rudy Giuliani, we’re not talking about some poor schmuck who cleans windows for a living. We’re talking about former federal prosecutors (Giuliani and Powell,) a Harvard Law School graduate (Chesebro) and a deputy district attorney (Ellis.)
In other words, this group had successful legal careers based on listening to what defendants told them and deciding whether what they were hearing was true or false. And by the way, as attorneys they are all what we refer to as ‘officers of the court,’ which means that you don’t get up in front of a judge and say something unless you know for sure that what you are saying is goddamn true.
And let’s remember something else. It’s not as if these four now-defendants were involved in some little robbery of an East Flatbush candy store which wouldn’t attract any attention at all. They had to know, or at least should have known, that the other side in this situation would spare no effort in trying to discredit what they had done, particularly when the other side won the goddamn election and controlled the federal government and the state governments in the states where they were fucking around.
Here’s the real question which emerges from this mess, and maybe some of you will send me your thoughts on what I’m now going to say in order to help me understand. Ready?
How could we have a political system in which the people who are tasked with advising the most powerful political leader in the entire world be so friggin’ dumb?
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