Jenna Ellis, former chief legal adviser to Donald Trump, has sparked furious backlash after her hateful comment about Saturday’s mass shooting at Colorado gay nightclub Club Q.
Five people died and at least 18 others were injured in the Colorado Springs attack, which came amid a campaign by conservative media and politicians to demonize trans people and drag queens and pass hostile legislation against the LGBTQ community as a whole. The fear campaign has coincided with a rise in harassment, threats and violence against LGBTQ people. The suspect in the murders faces charges of murder and hate crimes.
In an episode of her podcast this week, Ellis suggested that the victims of the shooting would suffer “eternal damnation” because, in her eyes, they were not Christians.
“More tragic than the untimely deaths is that the five people killed that night in the nightclub have no evidence whatsoever that they were Christians,” the far-right lawyer said. “And assuming that they have not accepted the truth of the gospel of Christ and have confirmed Jesus Christ as Lord of their lives, they are now reaping the consequences of eternal damnation.”
Ellis, also a right-wing media pundit, played a leading role in Trump’s failed legal push to overturn the 2020 presidential election and most recently served as legal counsel to extremist Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, who lost. Her history of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric goes back years.
For example, in a 2017 Facebook post recorded by Media Matters, she wrote: “Whether homosexuals are nice, wise people or misunderstood or mean isn’t the question. … Sin is always sin, even when nice people commit it.”
And after the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Fla., which killed 49 and injured 53, she expressed disappointment that “conservatives condone the LGBT agenda.”
“The Orlando shooting was absolutely horrifying and tragic. But the response to this tragedy should not be to embrace and advocate for gay rights,” she said after the deadly attack on the gay nightclub.
Earlier this week, she criticized the Colorado Springs Police Department for including every pronoun of the Club Q victims when sharing their identities.
In the wake of the attack, right-wing figures have dismissed allegations that their rhetoric helped create an environment for anti-LGBTQ violence, instead accusing critics of “politicizing” the tragedy and duplicating its false narratives that harm the community and their denigrate allies.
Ellis was severely condemned online on Wednesday after clips of her Club Q commentary circulated.
In response to the outcry, Ellis insisted that she has nothing against gays and trans people, just anyone she doesn’t think is Christian enough.
“I worry for EVERYONE and ALL who are not saved,” she tweeted. “The point is not that these people were gay/trans, but that there is no evidence that they were rescued. You all need church.”
