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Former GOP congressman Adam Kinzinger has suggested that Donald Trump is "done" in the wake of the former president's campaign attorney Jenna Ellis' plea deal video getting leaked.
Kinzinger, a frequent Trump critic and one of two Republicans who were part of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack, was reacting to the footage obtained by ABC News showing Ellis speaking to prosecutors as part of Fulton County Fani Willis' investigation into alleged criminal attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Ellis was one of 19 people, including Trump, who was charged under Willis' expansive RICO investigation. In late October, Ellis became the fourth defendant to take a plea deal after she admitted to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. As part of the deal, Ellis agreed to testify against the other defendants, including the former president. Video of her interview with Fulton County investigators has now emerged.
During one part of her interview, Ellis relayed an apparent conversation she had with former senior White House official Dan Scavino around December 19, 2020, where Scavino allegedly said Trump would not leave office "under any circumstances" and that he and his team was intending to "stay in power" even after losing the 2020 Election to President Joe Biden.
Reacting to the footage, Kinzinger wrote on X, formerly Twitter: "Watching the Jenna Ellis tapes, holy cats, Trump is done.
"[Chris] Christie is the one who has been clear from the beginning about how corrupt Donald is," Kinzinger added in reference to the former New Jersey governor who is a longshot candidate challenging Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination.
Trump's office has been contacted for comment via email.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him in the Georgia election interference investigation, and has frequently accused the probe of being a politically motivated "witch hunt."
The video interview from Ellis could be used by prosecutors to shine a light on Trump and his orbit's states of mind after the last election, with the former president frequently pushing false election fraud claims that had been widely rejected by the courts by that point.
Ellis told prosecutors that she had wanted to tell Scavino that she considered the "claims and the ability to challenge the election results... essentially over" by mid-December 2020, more than one month after Biden was declared the winner.
Ellis alleged she began talking to Scavino at a White House Christmas party about the lack of success Trump had in his election lawsuits, which had been thrown out by the Supreme Court. Ellis said that Scavino told her in a "kind of excited tone" that Trump and his inner circle were not concerned as they were "not going to leave."
"And I said, 'What do you mean?' And he said 'Well, the boss', meaning President Trump—and everyone understood 'the boss,' that's what we all called him—he said, 'The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power,'" Ellis told investigators.
"And I said to him, 'Well, it doesn't quite work that way, you realize?' and he said, 'We don't care.'"
Scavino's legal team declined to comment when contacted by Newsweek.
In a statement to ABC News, Steve Sadow, Trump's lead counsel in the Fulton County case, said the "purported private conversation" Ellis mentioned in her plea deal interview was "absolutely meaningless."
"The only salient fact to this nonsense line of inquiry is that President Trump left the White House on January 20, 2021, and returned to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida," Sadow said.
"If this is the type of bogus, ridiculous 'evidence' DA Willis intends to rely upon, it is one more reason that this political, travesty of a case must be dismissed."
About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, and Florida ... Read more