'Completely Dedicated to God' and Country: Trump Lawyer Jenna Ellis and Her Quest for the Truth

David Brody : Dec 15, 2020
CBN News

"My security is 100% in God and who I am in the Lord. That's what gives me the courage to go forward and know that I'm doing the right thing. I'm secure in God." -Jenna Ellis

[CBN News] The search for truth and the battles to get there, whether seeking out evidence of voter fraud or, first and foremost, a relationship with God, usually has many twists and turns. It's hardly easy and frequently messy. Jenna Ellis is keenly aware of that. While the rising star and legal counselor to President Trump is turning into a bonafide superstar in the conservative orbit, she has definitely rubbed liberals the wrong way with her rapid defense of this president, especially during his pursuit of election fraud in the last month and her defense of the traditional Biblical principles she cherishes. (Image source: CBN News)

"I am everything that they hate and that they don't want to acknowledge exists," Ellis tells CBN News. "I am a professional, very competent, young woman, who is completely dedicated to God and that's everything that they can't stand because it flies in the face of this feminist narrative that they want to propagate."

In vociferously championing President Trump's legal fight, the hate against her has piled up and her faith has surely been tested. Some of it has been typical standard-fare. After Ellis came down with COVID-19, late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel showed a picture of her as he mockingly said, "There she is. No mask, no brain." But many comments have been far worse. She's been called a traitor to the country, received hundreds of vile death threats and lewd sexual degradation emails and texts to her personal cellphone.

It's been hard for Ellis but that's when she draws closer to God. She loves the Book of Psalms. "When King David talks about all of the attacks and everything, he always finds solace and comfort in God," she said. "He knows that God is the only One that matters at the end of the day."

She's known all about the things of God from an early age. She grew up in a Biblically solid homeschooled family in Colorado, reading through the MacArthur Study Bible more than a dozen times (Ironically, and providentially, she now represents Pastor John MacArthur in the church's religious liberty fight over COVID-19 restrictions in California). The Ellis home was a non-denominational evangelical one and she prayed with her parents to receive Jesus at a very young age. She asked to be baptized at the age of twelve. During this time, her homeschool experience included an opportunity to get involved in a civic group that taught about the government and the court system. She was hooked.

"I knew I wanted to be a lawyer from the time I was 14," Ellis recalled.

But her hunger for truth and justice took an unusual and painful turn in her teen years. "When I was 16, I was sexually assaulted," she tells CBN News. "I had to go through the whole court process, testifying and everything." At that point, she knew she wanted to be a prosecutor and though the pain was great, she remembers lessons that came out of it. "That gave me not only more grounding in who I am as a woman made in the image of God but an understanding that God actually does work all things together for good in our lives, even if we don't understand it at the time."

It turns out a few years later, while a student at Cedarville University, she eventually won a monetary civil suit out of the sexual assault case but, feeling like it was, 'dirty money' she ended up using the settlement cash to set up a scholarship endowment to benefit future students at the college. Today, it's called the Jenna Lynn Ellis Award and provides a scholarship to students wishing to study a career in law, especially in victim advocacy or criminal prosecution.

The idea came to Ellis after hearing a pastoral message at Cedarville about how investing in the Christian life of others.

"It's been a really meaningful thing in my life, to see how God used that, to be able to encourage other students to go to law school and pursue truth and justice and use their law career to benefit God," she said.

Ellis eventually transferred from Cedarville to pursue a journalism degree at Colorado State University. She then went on to law school at the University of Richmond. Once there, she realized the in-depth homeschooling teaching she received studying history and major civilizations chronologically, gave her a really solid foundation in American history and civics.

"Once I got to law school and looked at the context of the Constitution and the Declaration, it came from a perspective of understanding world history and why, for example, religious liberty was so incredibly important to the founders and how they understood law and the place of law and government in society because of what they had come from and what they knew about history of the world," she explained.

After law school, she made her way back to Colorado as a county prosecutor but was soon let go when she brought to light what she saw as politically motivated prosecutions, especially in one specific case.

"It was an unethical prosecution. And I refused to do it. And I pled out the case to what it should have been," she said.

They told her to find other employment and suggested she become a defense attorney. Seeing that as a good idea, that's exactly what she did, moving into private practice but not before winning an unemployment claim as part of a wrongful termination appeal... Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

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