State DOJ charges Sen. Ellsworth with criminal misconduct, seeks suspension from office

Montana Sen. Jason Ellsworth, a Hamilton Republican, was charged on Thursday by the state justice department after attempting to circumvent the proper contract procedure to arrange a $171,000 business deal for a longtime friend and business associate.

The attorney general’s office charged the former Senate president with official misconduct, a misdemeanor. The charging documents allege Ellsworth used his official capacity as a public servant to obtain personal advantage outside of his lawful authority.

In a filing Thursday in Lewis and Clark County District Court, state prosecutors also asked the judge to suspend Ellsworth from office without pay pending final judgement in the case, citing a provision in the official misconduct law.

“Given the severity and nature of the alleged offense, the state believes official suspension from office pending final judgement is appropriate,” prosecutors Daniel Guzynski and Stephanie Robles wrote.

Official misconduct carries a fine of up to $500 and possible imprisonment in county jail for up to 6 months. If convicted, Ellsworth may also be required by a judge to permanently forfeit his office as a public servant, the press release explained.

Ellsworth and his attorney, Joan Mell, did not immediately respond to multiple requests for comment Thursday afternoon.

This is the first criminal proceeding against Ellsworth over the contract, although the state Senate in April voted to ban him from the chamber for life after a series of ethics hearings.

The Montana State News Bureau first reported in January Ellsworth attempted to use leftover funding from the Special Select Committee on Judicial Oversight and Reform (SSCJOR), a special legislative committee he led in 2024, to contract his longtime friend and business partner, Bryce Eggleston.

The job was meant to track the outcomes and implementation of the special select committee’s bills that became law and named Eggleston’s recently formed company, Agile Analytics, as the contractor. Eggleston later admitted he had no experience in judicial reform.

Before the final contract was signed, Ellsworth first attempted to split the contract into two nearly identical documents that separately were worth less than $100,000, but summed to $170,100. Any proposal costing more $100,000 is required to go through the state bidding process with the Department of Administration.

According to emails obtained at the time by the Bureau, legislative staff ultimately rejected the two-contract request, and Ellsworth later returned with a single contract that legislative staff and the Department of Administration approved on Dec. 31, the day the funding was set to expire.

At the time, a spokesperson for the Department of Administration said that the contract did not have to go through the public bidding process, arguing that because of the tight deadline DOA approved it as an emergency contract which are not subject to the same rules.

After the business deal came to light, Eggleston and Ellsworth ultimately backed out, and Eggleston never received payment.

Months before the arrangement came together for Agile Analytics, Ellsworth twice floated the idea of hiring someone to do this work during public SSCJOR meetings. His colleagues on the committee rejected the idea, arguing that the Legislature already has employees on staff who could do that work.

State investigators interviewed a financial manager for the state who was involved in this process, referred to in the charging documents as “A.C.” A.C. told investigators that she felt as though “it was Senator Ellsworth’s intention to hire Agile Analytics the whole time.”

Senate Republican leadership reported the matter to the legislative auditor, who later determined that Ellsworth had abused his position in office by attempting to force staff to accept two different contracts for the reported work.

The legislative auditor wrote in a memo that “there was and is no logical reason that the original contracts were bifurcated other than to unlawfully avoid oversight of the contracts by the Division of Administration…” Ellsworth has long denied that he bifurcated the contract to keep it out of view.

Ellsworth told the Montana State News Bureau in an interview outside the Senate chamber in January that he split the contracts in two because “It’s what I thought I had to do.”

Pushed on why it would make logical sense to split a single contract into two, Ellsworth told Bureau reporters, “It was just a lot of bills. So I thought (putting it) under two made a lot more sense.”

The Senate struggled over how to respond to Ellsworth’s actions, a debate that played out over the four months of the 2025 legislative session. This year’s Legislature was in part defined by deep political divisions in the Senate between 23 hardline Republicans and 27 other senators made up of all Democrats and the more moderate Republicans. Ellsworth was on the side of the 27, and therefore a key vote in keeping their pseudo majority, which they wielded frequently on key votes.

Ellsworth’s alliance with the moderates and Democrats deepened the political divide and was one of the features that sustained the fissures over the four months of the session.

Senate Minority Leader Pat Flowers helped lead the bipartisan coalition in the senate and worked to get the issue out of the senate's hands and into the Department of Justice's purview.

"… Sen. Ellsworth will be held accountable in a court of law," Flowers, a Belgrade Democrat, said in a statement on Friday. "We thank the investigators and the prosecution for their work and look forward to justice swiftly being served."

Montana Senate President Matt Regier on Thursday applauded the attorney general’s office for filing the charge, vindicating the legislators, which included Republicans and Democrats, who “stood up against corruption” and voted to expel Ellsworth from office. Still, Regier said in a phone interview on Wednesday that Ellsworth “needs to have his day in court.”

Asked about state prosecutors’ request that a District Court judge suspend Ellsworth during the term of the criminal case, Regier said, “That seems very logical to me.”

Ellsworth during public hearings denied any wrongdoing, although he acknowledged an appearance of impropriety.

“While I have not had and do not have a personal or private interest in this matter, I understand the appearance of one may exist,” he said in a March hearing. “And the appearance of impropriety may impugn the integrity of this body.”

For a period of time when the Senate was at an impasse, Ellsworth began participating in the Legislature remotely. His attorney indicated the scandal was causing him health issues.

Ellsworth filed a $5 million defamation claim in March, and Montana’s tort defense office later denied it. In addition to defamation, the claim was submitted for invasion of privacy, emotional distress and “blacklisting.” In the filing, Mell asserted Ellsworth had developed health issues due to the unrelenting scrutiny, and news coverage, of his contract deal with Agile Analytics.

After referring the matter to the state justice department, the Montana Senate held its own ethics hearings on the business deal and ultimately voted to ban Ellsworth from the chamber for life. The censure vote also removed him from any interim committees and barred him from speaking with legislative staff.

In 2021 Ellsworth invoked the Montana Attorney General in order to be let go from a traffic stop in Broadwater County, where a highway patrol trooper had pulled him over for speeding in a construction zone.

County prosecutors charged Ellsworth with obstructing a police officer for repeatedly disobeying her orders to stay in his car. Instead he brought up the Montana Constitution on his phone to remind her of a provision that state lawmakers cannot be stopped while traveling to conduct legislative business. The session that year had adjourned, but he had a legislative hearing the next day. Ellsworth ultimately pled guilty to the charge.