{"id":832783,"date":"2026-05-30T17:24:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T17:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/832783\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T17:24:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T17:24:18","slug":"doj-seeks-recusal-of-judge-from-georgia-election-case-citing-disciplinary-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/832783\/","title":{"rendered":"DOJ seeks recusal of judge from Georgia election case, citing disciplinary action"},"content":{"rendered":"

ATLANTA (AP) \u2014 The U.S. Department of Justice is asking a judge to recuse herself in a fight over Georgia election records, arguing that she attended an event honoring Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis<\/a>, who prosecuted President Donald Trump<\/a>, raising questions about the judge\u2019s ability to be impartial.<\/p>\n

A federal judge in 11th Judicial Circuit received a \u201cprivate reprimand\u201d<\/a> after a court investigation found that the judge had sex in the courthouse with a high-ranking uniformed police officer within earshot of staff, attended a partisan event and then initially lied to deny the allegations. <\/p>\n

The court\u2019s investigation did not publicly identify the judge or the court location within the 11th Circuit\u2019s jurisdiction, which includes Alabama, Florida and Georgia. The Justice Department is relying on media reports that identify U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross in Atlanta as the judge in question.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press has not independently confirmed the judge\u2019s identity. A person who answered the phone in Ross\u2019 chambers Friday said the judge was unavailable and referred questions about the allegations to the court\u2019s media office which said, \u201cJudge Ross has no comment right now.\u201d The media office did not immediately respond Saturday to a second email seeking comment about the Justice Department motion seeking Ross\u2019 recusal.<\/p>\n

Federal judges are appointed for life but can be subject to disciplinary action, including censure, public or private reprimands and temporary withholding of cases. They can only be removed through impeachment by Congress.<\/p>\n

Ross was nominated in January 2014 by then-President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and she was confirmed by the Senate in November of that year. She had previously served as a state court judge in DeKalb County, which includes a small part of the city of Atlanta, since 2011. Prior to taking the bench, she had worked as a state and federal prosecutor, mostly in Atlanta, for more than a decade.<\/p>\n

The election records fight<\/p>\n

Ross is overseeing the election records case filed by the Justice Department against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department has sued multiple states<\/a> seeking statewide voter lists. Raffensperger has said that Georgia law prohibits the release of voters\u2019 confidential personal information unless certain qualifications are met and that the federal government hadn\u2019t met those conditions. He has said that he sent the public part of the voter roll to the Justice Department in December. <\/p>\n

Ross has scheduled a hearing in the case for Wednesday, though the Justice Department has asked to delay that hearing because of its request for the judge to recuse herself.<\/p>\n

The judicial discipline case<\/p>\n

In the disciplinary case against the unnamed federal judge, the Judicial Council of the 11th Circuit chose in a February order to impose a private reprimand that kept the judge\u2019s name secret. The Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability of the Judicial Conference of the United States on May 22 affirmed that order. <\/p>\n

An investigation report attached to the order says the judge went to an event hosted by a district attorney\u2019s campaign. The judge acknowledged having gone to the event to visit with former colleagues in the district attorney\u2019s office at a private mixer but said it was held in the same place but was separated from the prosecutor\u2019s victory party. The investigative committee found that the mixer was part of the larger partisan event that was sponsored by the district attorney\u2019s campaign or donors and that the judge should not have attended the event.<\/p>\n

Ross previously worked in the Fulton County district attorney\u2019s office and overlapped with Willis there before Willis was district attorney.<\/p>\n

The 2020 Georgia election case<\/p>\n

Willis began investigating Trump<\/a> and others for possible interference in the 2020 election in Fulton County soon after becoming district attorney in January 2021. Among the things she looked at was a January 2021 phone call<\/a> in which Trump urged Raffensperger<\/a> to help \u201cfind\u201d the votes needed to overturn Democrat Joe Biden\u2019s win in Georgia in the 2020 presidential election. <\/p>\n

Willis in August 2023 obtained an indictment<\/a> against Trump and 18 others<\/a>, accusing them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to overturn Georgia\u2019s 2020 election results. That case was ultimately dismissed<\/a> in November after an appeals court found an \u201cappearance of impropriety\u201d<\/a> created by a romantic relationship Willis had with the outside lawyer she had hired to lead the prosecution.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department\u2019s arguments<\/p>\n

\u201cA judge who attended a party celebrating the election of a Democrat best known for prosecuting a Republican President for alleged election interference cannot then preside over a case concerning that President\u2019s efforts to ensure election integrity,\u201d Justice Department lawyers wrote in their filing Friday.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department argued that any \u201cobjective reasonable observer\u201d would see Ross\u2019 presence at Willis\u2019 election night party as an endorsement of her election and her actions in office.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Judge Ross is indeed the Subject Judge, that conduct gives rise to an appearance of bias, which requires Judge Ross to recuse herself from this election-related case,\u201d the Justice Department filing says.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department filing makes passing mention of the allegations of improper sexual activity with a police officer in the judge\u2019s chambers and the subsequent false statements the judge made to deny those allegations, but says \u201cthose are not the subject of this Motion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Separately, the Atlanta Police Department has said it has opened an investigation<\/a> to determine whether the \u201chigh-ranking law enforcement officer\u201d found to have had sex with a federal judge in the judge\u2019s chambers is a member of their department.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATLANTA (AP) \u2014 The U.S. Department of Justice is asking a judge to recuse herself in a fight…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":832784,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[7373,5356,11744,178590,356,69,341543,90,116732,10104,57,4353,82,2936,362,50,80,94,61,67,370,132,68],"class_list":["post-832783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","category-us","tag-2026-elections","tag-atlanta","tag-barack-obama","tag-brad-raffensperger","tag-courts","tag-donald-trump","tag-eleanor-ross","tag-elections","tag-fani-willis","tag-ga-state-wire","tag-general-news","tag-georgia","tag-joe-biden","tag-law-enforcement","tag-legal-proceedings","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-u-s-department-of-justice","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-government","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116664694700552882","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/832784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}