Judge Brenda WeaverCalling a complaint against her “meritless,” an oversight group declined to discipline a North Georgia judge who arranged for the arrest of a journalist.
“No evidence has been presented to show any violation of the Code of Judicial Ethics by Judge [Brenda] Weaver,” the board of the Judicial Qualifications Commission wrote in a ruling released by Weaver on Friday. “Instead, the evidence appears to show a personal dislike of the Judge. The complaints are nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to enlist the JQC in their fixation.”
In June 2016, Fannin Focus publisher Mark Thomason was in the middle of defending himself in a defamation lawsuit filed by a court reporter after he claimed that the transcript of a particular court case was not accurate.
Knowing that Weaver had funded the court reporter’s lawsuit with public funds, Thomason tried to issue a subpoena for checks from Weaver’s operating account.
Around the same time, he also filed an open records request with the Pickens County Commission for any checks commissioners had given Weaver for her account. Thomason wrote that he had reason to believe that someone illegally cashed those checks.