Senator Jason Ellsworth, R-Hamilton, watches a vote during the Senate Floor Session on Wednesday, February 12, 2025. (Nathaniel Bailey for the Daily Montanan)
Five senators spent the majority of the first day of a week-long legislative break in a Senate Ethics Committee meeting where a fact-finding hearing into allegations of ethical impropriety lodged against Sen. Jason Ellsworth, R-Hamilton, and a $170,000 contract he signed with a business associate.
The four-member committee — comprising Republicans Tom McGillvray and Forrest Mandeville, chairperson, and Democrats Laura Smith and Chris Pope — heard testimony from two witnesses.
Ellsworth did not attend the hearing in person, but was present via Zoom, as was his legal counsel, Joan Mell, who cross-examined the witnesses and lodged objections against the hearing process.
Ellsworth has denied any impropriety and also submitted a $5 million claim alleging defamation and emotional distress from the process.
Despite the full-day hearing, the committee only heard from its first two witnesses, Legislative Services Financial Manager Angie Carter and Deputy Director of Legislative Legal Services Jaret Coles.
Both individuals testified to the timeline surrounding Ellsworth’s efforts to enter into a $170,000 contract with Bryce Eggelston in the final days of 2025 — and final days of his tenure as Senate president.
Emails among Ellsworth, Legislative Services and the Department of Administration lay out a six-day push to turn a pair of contracts Ellsworth and Eggleston signed to provide consulting services during and after the 2025 legislative session into a single, legally-binding contract, after the original bifurcated documents were flagged as “problematic.”
Carter testified that on Dec. 26, Ellsworth texted her and sent her an email from his personal email address with two signed contracts, each for roughly $87,000, along with invoices from Eggleston’s company Agile Analytics.
Adam Duerk, the staff attorney for the committee, asked Carter if that was typical practice for her office to receive signed contracts that had not undergone internal legal review.
“It is not typical,” she replied.
She testified that she noticed the contracts did not have a payment schedule — they were to be paid in full, up front — and the payment wasn’t directly tied to any deliverables, which she said is good practice for this kind of work. although an expectation of deliverables is a good practice – specify
The missing pieces, and the avenue the contracts took by bypassing review of Legislative Services, were “alarming,” Carter said.
At several points during Carter’s testimony, Mell, Ellsworth’s lawyer, interjected, asking about the relevancy of the background testimony, when the Ethics Committee’s purview for the hearing was specifically related to whether Ellsworth failed to disclose a conflict of interest.
Questions regarding whether Ellsworth committed waste and abuse with the contract are part of a criminal investigation by the Department of Justice, while the Senate is only looking into ethical allegations.
Carter, and subsequently Coles, both testified that Ellsworth had never disclosed his professional or personal relationship with Eggleston while procuring the contract.
Coles said that he often does legal review of contracts, and when he looked over the two sent his way, “there were some things in those contracts that were definitely problematic, in my opinion, from a payment perspective, and the state’s interest being protected.”
As the contracts were payable immediately, Coles said many tools to ensure state resources would be spent in exchange for services or that the contract would be void if something happened with the vendor, weren’t included.
He also said the dual contracts raised questions, as they came in below $100,000, a limit that, if exceeded, would kick the contracts to the Department of Administration’s procurement services.
Coles testified that the decision among LSD staff was to rework the two contracts into a single, sole-source contract and work with the Department of Administration to get it approved. He filled out a form for the sole-source procurement — meaning the contract did not go out for public bid — after speaking with Ellsworth, which included a line that Ellsworth “was unable to find anyone that could perform the services that are desired, other than through Agile Analytics.”
The single contract was ultimately approved on Dec. 31, but was ultimately canceled in January after questions were raised by Republican leadership in the Senate. The state did not pay on the contracts.
The Ethics Committee will reconvene on March 14 to continue hearing witness testimony.
In absentia
Ellsworth, who appeared at the hearing remotely, is also expected to conduct much of his business in the Senate remotely as well.
The Hamilton Senator was not at his desk on March 5, and Senate President Matt Regier confirmed that Ellsworth received permission from Senate Majority Leader McGillvray to be gone for the rest of the session, citing health reasons.
On March 3, Ellsworth’s attorney submitted a claim for $5 million for “Defamation, False Light-Invasion of Privacy, Tortious Interference, Intentional and Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress, Blacklisting” related to the allegations against him.
The claim was filed against the State Senate, President Regier and members of his staff, the Legislative Auditor and legal staff in the auditor’s office.
Mell has maintained that the allegations against Ellsworth are false, and that testimony from Eggleston clearly shows that he did not commit any waste or abuse, or ethical violations.
Ellsworth is “is currently receiving medical treatment for his objective symptoms of harm and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future. He has been forced to take leave to address the health care consequences,” the claim states. “The distractions and harm caused have interfered with his legislative duties, and he has been pressured to compromise his political beliefs and advocacy for the people of Montana to align with the majority in violation of his rights to his elective office and right to vote.”