DOJ seeks recusal of judge from Georgia election case over reported attendance at Fani Willis event

Kate Brumback, The Associated Press

ATLANTA (AP) — 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, who prosecuted President Donald Trump, raising questions about the judge’s ability to be impartial.

A federal judge in 11th Judicial Circuit received a “private reprimand” 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.

The court’s investigation did not publicly identify the judge or the court location within the 11th Circuit’s 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.

The Associated Press has not independently confirmed the judge’s identity. A person who answered the phone in Ross’ chambers Friday said the judge was unavailable and referred questions about the allegations to the court’s media office which said, “Judge Ross has no comment right now.” The media office did not immediately respond Saturday to a second email seeking comment about the Justice Department motion seeking Ross’ recusal.

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.

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.

The election records fight

Ross is overseeing the election records case filed by the Justice Department against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

The Justice Department has sued multiple states seeking statewide voter lists. Raffensperger has said that Georgia law prohibits the release of voters’ confidential personal information unless certain qualifications are met and that the federal government hadn’t met those conditions. He has said that he sent the public part of the voter roll to the Justice Department in December.

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.

The judicial discipline case

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’s name secret. The Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability of the Judicial Conference of the United States on May 22 affirmed that order.

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

Ross previously worked in the Fulton County district attorney’s office and overlapped with Willis there before Willis was district attorney.

The 2020 Georgia election case

Willis began investigating Trump 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 in which Trump urged Raffensperger to help “find” the votes needed to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s win in Georgia in the 2020 presidential election.

Willis in August 2023 obtained an indictment against Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. That case was ultimately dismissed in November after an appeals court found an “appearance of impropriety” created by a romantic relationship Willis had with the outside lawyer she had hired to lead the prosecution.

The Justice Department’s arguments

“A 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’s efforts to ensure election integrity,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in their filing Friday.

The Justice Department argued that any “objective reasonable observer” would see Ross’ presence at Willis’ election night party as an endorsement of her election and her actions in office.

“If 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,” the Justice Department filing says.

The Justice Department filing makes passing mention of the allegations of improper sexual activity with a police officer in the judge’s chambers and the subsequent false statements the judge made to deny those allegations, but says “those are not the subject of this Motion.”

Separately, the Atlanta Police Department has said it has opened an investigation to determine whether the “high-ranking law enforcement officer” found to have had sex with a federal judge in the judge’s chambers is a member of their department.

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