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{"id":24423,"date":"2026-06-17T12:22:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T12:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/judge-disciplined-over-courthouse-sex-recuses-herself-in-georgia-election-case\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T12:22:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T12:22:16","slug":"judge-disciplined-over-courthouse-sex-recuses-herself-in-georgia-election-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/judge-disciplined-over-courthouse-sex-recuses-herself-in-georgia-election-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge disciplined over courthouse sex recuses herself in Georgia election case"},"content":{"rendered":"<section>\n<div>\n<p><time datetime=\"2026-06-16T23:21:58-04:00\">Jun. 16, 2026, 11:21 PM EDT<\/time><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>A federal judge who was disciplined after an investigation found that she had&nbsp;sex with a police officer&nbsp;in her chambers and attended a partisan event, then lied when confronted with the allegations, has recused herself in a fight over Georgia election records after the U.S. Department of Justice raised questions about her ability to be impartial.<\/p>\n<p>The Justice Department sought to remove U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross from the case, citing her reported attendance at an event for Fulton County District Attorney&nbsp;Fani Willis, who prosecuted President&nbsp;Donald Trump. Ross on Tuesday filed an order recusing herself, writing that she was doing so &ldquo;out of an abundance of caution for the potential perception of bias.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The Justice Department had sued Georgia&nbsp;Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger&nbsp;seeking an unredacted statewide voter list, and Ross was presiding over that case.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Both the Trump administration&rsquo;s present and Willis&rsquo;s past efforts have become heavily polarized,&rdquo; Ross wrote, explaining that she &ldquo;cannot discount&rdquo; that an objective observer might interpret her attendance at an event sponsored by Willis&rsquo; campaign as support for the district attorney&rsquo;s position, even if she only went to see former colleagues.<\/p>\n<p>Ross&nbsp;received a &ldquo;private reprimand&rdquo;&nbsp;after a court investigation found that she 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<p>The investigation report says Ross went to an event hosted by a district attorney&rsquo;s campaign. The judge said the district attorney had been a friend since 1999 and acknowledged having gone to the a private mixer held on the sidelines of the event to visit with former colleagues in the district attorney&rsquo;s office.<\/p>\n<p>Ross previously worked in the Fulton County District Attorney&rsquo;s Office and overlapped there with Willis there before Willis was district attorney.<\/p>\n<p>Willis in August 2023&nbsp;obtained an indictment&nbsp;against&nbsp;Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to overturn Georgia&rsquo;s 2020 election results. That case was&nbsp;ultimately dismissed&nbsp;in November.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ms.now\/news\/georgia-judge-eleanor-ross-election\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jun. 16, 2026, 11:21 PM EDT A federal judge who was disciplined after an investigation found that she had&nbsp;sex with a police officer&nbsp;in her chambers and attended a partisan event, then lied when confronted with the allegations, has recused herself in a fight over Georgia election records after the U.S. Department of Justice raised questions [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24424,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}