Newsmax hires Jenna Ellis, Hogan Gidley as contributors

Newsmax has hired former President Trump’s campaign’s legal adviser Jenna Ellis and former Trump campaign spokesperson and deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley as contributors, the network announced Monday. 

Ellis will comment on the 2022 and 2024 elections from a legal and faith-based standpoint, according to the announcement, while Gidley will be a political analyst. 

A Newsmax spokesperson said the network signed deals with Ellis and Gidley within the last few weeks but would not discuss financial terms of the deals.

Ellis was a member of the Trump legal team created to fight the results of the 2020 presidential election based on baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud. 

In December, it was discovered that she had been fired from her position in Colorado as a county prosecutor for making mistakes — not, as she told The Wall Street Journal, for refusing to bring an unethical case to trial. 

In early May, news broke that Ellis would be a founding member of the American Greatness Fund, a group looking into allegations of voter fraud that was launched by Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale.

Newsmax — which publicly apologized for and posted clarifications about false voter fraud allegations — did not immediately answer questions about Ellis’s history.

But a spokeperson did address the network’s approach to election fraud theories held by contributors.

“Newsmax has accepted the 2020 vote results as legal and final,” a network spokesperson said. “While some people that appear on Newsmax may hold a different opinion, our editorial position remains the same.”

Prior to working for Trump, Ellis had a history of working for organizations with religious affiliations or missions.

She was an assistant professor at Colorado Christian University, a director of policy at the James Dobson Family Institute, and is also special counsel for the Thomas More Society, a not-for-profit law firm that advocates for religious liberty, among other issues.  

Gidley had worked for the White House media team since 2017 but took over as the Trump campaign’s national press secretary from Kayleigh McEnany, who became White House press secretary.

According to Ballotpedia, he started his career as a reporter and worked for Mike Huckabee when he was governor of Arkansas and also as a spokesperson on Huckabee’s presidential campaign.

Gidley was also a communications director for former Sen. Elizabeth Dole’s (R-N.C.) 2008 campaign, and the former executive director of the Republican Party of South Carolina.

An MSNBC host once cut off Gidley mid-interview after he began talking about election fraud theories.

However, in a separate interview when discussing the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, Gidley said the events were a “black eye” on the Trump presidency.

“There’s no question this last little bit was a black eye,” Gidley said when Alex Wagner of Showtime’s “The Circus” pushed him about the Jan. 6 pro-Trump violence.