ATLANTA (AP) — A federal judge who was disciplined after an investigation found that she had sex with a police officer in her chambers and then lied about it wrote a letter to a former law clerk apologizing for her “harmful, offensive, and unprofessional behavior.”
An investigation initiated last year by the chief judge of the 11th Judicial Circuit found that U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross had sex in the courthouse with a high-ranking uniformed police officer within earshot of staff, attended a partisan event and initially lied when confronted with the allegations. Ross wrote in the letter dated Thursday and obtained by The Associated Press that her “actions were patently wrong, and there is no excuse.”
“You deserved better than to have your experience marred by my own offensive conflict,” says the letter, which was first reported by The New York Times.
Ross was nominated to the bench in the Northern District of Georgia in 2014 by then-President Barack Obama, a Democrat.
The investigation of Ross began after one of her law clerks reported that on multiple occasions the judge had engaged in sexual activity with a high-ranking uniformed police officer in her office during working hours. It also was alleged that the judge didn’t properly supervise clerks and on one occasion yelled and cursed at staff.
Ross received a “private reprimand” that didn't publicly name her after the investigation confirmed the allegations against her. She also agreed not to seek the position of chief judge of the district when eligible and to write apology letters to six former law clerks.
William Pryor, the chief judge of the 11th Circuit, opened the initial investigation of Ross last fall. He asked her to respond to the clerk’s allegations that she had had sex in her office and had attended a partisan event. She replied the same day and “specifically denied” each allegation. In a follow-up email the next day, the judge speculated to Pryor that the law clerk may have invented things in retaliation for being required to work in the office.
Ross' letter says, “I also want to convey my deepest apologies to you for my false accusation against you. Again, I have no excuse and immensely regret my behavior.”
The letter also references a previous letter that Ross wrote to the clerk, saying it was “entirely deficient, as I did not take full accountability for my actions, and I failed to give you the apology that you deserve.”
Federal judges are appointed for life and can only be removed by impeachment by Congress. Two Georgia congressman this week filed separate impeachment resolutions against Ross. It is up to the House Judiciary Committee to decide whether to start impeachment proceedings.
Pryor appointed a special committee to investigate. That investigation was detailed in a report attached to the disciplinary order.
The committee’s review of logs and security footage showed an officer had frequently visited the judge’s chambers in uniform around lunchtime. Six clerks recalled seeing someone who fit the officer’s description, with three remembering overhearing what may have been sexual activity in the judge’s office.
Three clerks remembered bringing summer interns on their first day to watch the judge presiding over a hearing in a criminal case. Right after that, they told the committee, the judge declined to have lunch with the interns, acknowledging having too many martinis the night before at a primary election victory party for a district attorney friend.
The clerks said the judge didn’t provide sufficient guidance and “rarely, if ever, substantively edited civil orders the clerks drafted.” While clerks described an “eggshell culture,” the committee didn’t find evidence of abusive behavior.
The judge ultimately admitted to having an extramarital sexual relationship with the officer but denied the allegations about mistreatment of staff, the committee wrote. The judge acknowledged to the committee having gone to a “mixer” of former employees of a district attorney’s office where the judge used to work, but said it was in a separate room from the victory party.
“Though I can never fully undo the harm that I have caused you, I hope that my acknowledgment of these failures is a small first step,” Ross wrote in the letter to her former clerk. “I will be taking further steps to ensure that this never happens again.”
FILE - Fulton County Senior ADA Eleanor Ross speaks during opening statements Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010 in Atlanta. (Vino Wong/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire after shares of his rocket company SpaceX soared in Wall Street's biggest initial public offering of stock.
Shares in SpaceX jumped more than 19% after opening for trading Friday, a sign that investors are looking past the billions the company is losing and instead betting that its massive investments in satellites, orbital data centers and artificial intelligence will pay off in the future.
SpaceX opened around midday at $150 a share, then rose to around $168, before finishing the day just below $161. That price gave the company a market value of $2.1 trillion, making it the sixth largest public U.S. company — larger even than its founder and CEO's other big business, the electric vehicle maker Tesla.
Between his holdings in SpaceX and Tesla, where he is also CEO, Musk is now worth an estimated $1.1 trillion, according to Forbes.
Musk says SpaceX, founded in 2002, is going public now because it needs money to fund its ambitions of putting satellites and data centers in space and eventually establishing a colony of people on Mars.
He marked the opening of trading on Nasdaq by joining a ceremonial bell ringing from Starbase, the South Texas home of SpaceX.
He reiterated his lofty goals “to make life multiplanetary.”
“Not just a few astronauts, I mean literally you,” Musk said. “Whoever you are watching this, SpaceX wants to be able to take you to the moon, take you to Mars and ultimately beyond.”
Known for his technological breakthroughs, as well as wild claims and missed deadlines, Musk was able to whip up enthusiasm for the IPO. The typical company going public has seen a 7% jump in its first day of trading, from 1980 through 2025, according to Jay Ritter, a professor at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business.
Institutional and retail investors alike jumped at the opportunity to buy a piece of the company at $135 per share before trading began. The $75 billion in proceeds SpaceX raised easily topped the previous record IPO from oil giant Saudi Aramco in 2019.
In addition to establishing a one-million person Martian colony, the company has promised to save humanity by establishing other outposts in space, launch data centers the size of football fields into orbit and outdo rivals Anthropic and OpenAI in the race to make money from artificial intelligence.
To reach its goals, SpaceX needs billions more than it currently takes in from its rocket and satellite business. Between the start of 2025 and March 31, 2026, the company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., lost $8.7 billion.
Betting on SpaceX is in many ways a bet on Musk himself. In an unusual arrangement that has drawn criticism from shareholder watchdogs, he holds 82% interest in a special B class of shares, giving him sweeping power to control the company even though his ownership stake is about half that.
“There’s a lot of hype, but I see the faith that investors have in Musk,” said Yordys Coro, an IT support contractor in Miami as he watched his $14,000 investment in SpaceX shoot up to $17,000 in just a few hours. “I’m going to hold on.”
Wall Street bankers that helped take SpaceX public are also enthusiastic about the company — and the big fees they will earn — but not everyone thinks the stock price is justified.
Analysts at research firm Morningstar, which doesn't earn any investment banking fees, wrote that the IPO is “significantly overvalued."
Citing SpaceX’s technology challenges, including shielding its orbiting datacenters from radiation damage and catching up to leaders in AI such as Anthropic and OpenAI, they estimated the company is only worth $780 billion — less than half its IPO value.
SpaceX itself has hinted at the challenges, conceding in regulatory documents that some of its business plans rest on “unproven technologies.” It also indicated that another part of the company, its artificial intelligence business called xAI, has no clear path to profitability and is burning cash to catch up with rivals.
On a livestreamed conference Thursday with the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, one of the investment banks making big money off the IPO, Musk offered few details.
He entertained the crowd with talk of “moon hotels,” a future Martian colony and a network of Earth-orbiting data centers powered by the sun. But when asked about plans for his flagship chatbot offering Grok, he pivoted to talking about his satellites.
Still, Musk has pulled off the seemingly impossible before.
The now-trillionaire — on paper at least — made his initial fortune by creating two companies, Zip2 and PayPal, that netted him about $200 million at sale. He used that money to start SpaceX and invest in Tesla, and defied the odds by creating a space company that figured out how to reuse rockets and a car company that made electric vehicles cool.
Musk has realized vast sums of wealth for himself, much of it in stock he has yet to cash in or grants for shares he’ll only receive if Tesla or SpaceX hit ambitious performance targets.
His recent pay package from Tesla was so large it even drew criticism from the Vatican. At Tesla, he’s worried shareholders by fighting with regulators or dividing his attention between multiple companies and last year by taking a role in the Trump administration.
But a rising stock price has cured all ills: Since it went public in 2010, Tesla has returned 20,000% for shareholders, or more than $1.2 trillion in investor wealth.
SpaceX is the first of three “megacap” companies expected to go public this year, with Anthropic and OpenAI to follow. Nasdaq even revised its rules to allow SpaceX to gain entry into funds tied to its indexes in 15 days, which means investors will end up buying the rocket maker's shares much earlier.
Not all investors are thrilled about SpaceX potentially showing up in their holdings of index funds.
Officials from pension funds for firefighters, teachers and other workers in California and New York sent a letter to SpaceX last month decrying some of the provisions in its IPO, including mandatory arbitration of shareholder claims and how much power Musk will hold over the company.
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AP reporters Stan Choe and Wyatte Grantham-Philips contributed from New York and reporter Matt O'Brien contributed from Providence.
Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX, third from right, celebrates with colleagues during a bell ringing ceremony for the IPO of SpaceX at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, Friday, June 12, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
A large inflatable figure depicting Elon Musk stands in Times Square in New York on Thursday, June 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX speaks during a bell ringing ceremony for the IPO of SpaceX at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, Friday, June 12, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX celebrates with colleagues during a bell ringing ceremony for the IPO of SpaceX at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, Friday, June 12, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
FILE - Elon Musk departs after a welcome ceremony with President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People, Thursday, May 14, 2026, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
