Donald Trump's top lawyer Jenna Ellis is revealed to have worked in traffic court before being fired as a prosecutor and hasn't paid bar fees
- Jenna Ellis, a lawyer on President Donald Trump's 'elite strike force team,' worked in traffic court before being fired as a prosecutor
- She can't practice in federal court because she hasn't paid her fees
- Ellis was subject to profiles in Wall Street Journal and New York Times on rapid rise from Colorado attorney to Trump defender
- Ellis parlayed work for James Dobson and Christian right into a national profile
- Trump noticed her when she defended him on Fox News
- She calls herself a 'constitutional law attorney' but it's unclear when she practiced that or election law
Jenna Ellis, a lawyer on President Donald Trump's 'elite strike force team,' worked in traffic court before being fired as a prosecutor and hasn't paid bar fees.
www.dailymail.co.uk
She bills herself as a “constitutional law attorney.” Her experience doesn’t align with the sort of lawyer she plays on TV.
www.nytimes.com
The 36-year-old’s career includes six months as a local prosecutor and a book interpreting the Constitution through a biblical lens.
www.wsj.com
She was
paid nearly $140,000 from the Trump campaign in October for what was described as legal consulting, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Four years ago, Ellis was a young Colorado attorney practicing in county courts and teaching legal classes at Colorado Christian University, a local Christian university that doesn't have a law school.
She is described as a 'constitutional law attorney' in her op-ed pieces and TV appearances, but the Journal's search of the federal courts database PACER doesn't show her as an attorney in any federal case.
And Ellis can't practice law in federal court in Colorado because she didn't pay a fee the court assesses to lawyers practicing there.
She only worked as a prosecutor in Weld County, Colorado, for six months in 2012 where she handled traffic cases and other misdemeanors, according to the Weld County District Attorney's office.
She was fired from that job and then worked as a criminal-defense attorney in Colorado in several small local practices.
The New York Times reported that there is nothing in Ellis' record since she graduated law school at the University of Richmond in 2011 that shows any time spent litigating election law cases.
White House aides have expressed concern about Ellis.
She was viewed as an uncontrollable figure inside the campaign who often provided President Trump with questionable information about alleged voter fraud.
And she appeared on television without asking for approval from campaign officials, aides told
The Washington Post.
She dubbed herself 'President-Elect Jenna Ellis' on Twitter.
And she has not always been an ardent Trump supporter.
During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, she called Trump an 'idiot,' a 'bully' and agreed that he was someone intent to 'destroy American democracy.'