Sex in her chambers. Lies to investigators. Now, U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross is walking away from a high-stakes Georgia election battle.
The Department of Justice forced her hand. Federal prosecutors questioned her ability to stay impartial, pointing directly to her cozy history with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Ross folded. On Tuesday, she signed her own recusal order, claiming she did so to avoid the “potential perception of bias.”
The lawsuit itself is a bureaucratic knife fight. The DOJ is suing Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, demanding an unredacted statewide voter list. Ross was running the show. But her presence poisoned the well. Willis, of course, is the DA who famously indicted Donald Trump over the 2020 election—a case that collapsed in November. Ross admitted that an outsider might see her presence at a Willis campaign event as taking sides. She claims she just wanted to see old colleagues.
Her excuses ring hollow. The judge’s closet is packed with skeletons. A prior judicial investigation caught her having sex with a high-ranking, uniformed cop right in her courthouse chambers, well within earshot of her staff. She also hit up a partisan campaign mixer and lied to investigators when confronted. Her punishment? A slap on the wrist. A “private reprimand.”
That mixer was hosted by Willis’s campaign. Ross and Willis are old colleagues from their days in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office. In the hyper-polarized circus of Georgia politics, that connection was a bridge too far. The DOJ pounced. Ross had to go.
