Both his father Sandy Ellis and uncle George H. W. Bush were members of Skull and Bones at Yale.
[5] According to an interview Ellis gave to Jane Mayer of The New Yorker magazine in 2000,[7] he was responsible for Fox News's decisions in calling states for Gore or Bush based on statistical results from the VNS data.
After the interview was published, Fox News Vice President John Moody admitted that Ellis had broken rules by sharing the data and said he was considering disciplinary action.
"We obeyed those [rules] more strictly than any other news organization, precisely because my cousin was running for president," Ellis told USA Today.
[3] In 2002 Ellis began working as a Senior Fellow at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.
[3] During the 2012 United States presidential election Ellis worked as a contributing opinion editor at BuzzFeed News.
[9] In 2021, Ellis hosted the News Items Podcast with co-host Rebecca Darst, produced by The Recount.