essayli

The White House moved Tuesday to keep interim U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli in power as Los Angeles’ top federal prosecutor, marking the Trump administration’s latest maneuver to defy norms and keep controversial appointees in positions across the country.

Essayli — a former Riverside County assemblyman, staunch conservative and Trump ally — will be named Acting U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, according to Matthew Nies, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice. He will be granted the acting title at 5:01 p.m., Nies said.

The maneuver — which echoes steps the Trump administration took to keep its chosen prosecutors in power in New York, New Jersey and Nevada in recent weeks — allows Essayli to stay in office while sidestepping normal confirmation processes in the U.S. Senate.

Essayli was appointed to his post by U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi in early April. Interim appointees must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate within 120 days. But Trump never moved to formally nominate Essayli for confirmation by the U.S. Senate, where he would have faced fierce opposition from California Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, both Democrats.

That left Essayli’s fate in the hands of a local federal judicial panel, which declined to name anyone to the post on Tuesday, according to a report from Fox News. Court records do not reflect any action taken by local judges.

Assuming the role of acting U.S. attorney will seemingly give Essayli another 210 days in the position before he has to face any formal confirmation process.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles referred all questions to the White House, which did not immediately respond to an inquiry. Essayli did not respond to a call seeking comment.

The move is the latest sign of the Trump administration’s willingness to use legal workarounds to keep its appointees for U.S. attorney in power as the clock runs out on their interim status.

In upstate New York, a judicial panel declined to name John A. Sarcone III, or anyone else, as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York. In response, Bondi appointed Sarcone to a lower position in the office but effectively gave him the powers of the top federal prosecutor.

In a letter to the chief U.S. district judge, later posted by the court, Sarcone said he’d been designated the first assistant United States attorney for the Northern District of New York and is now serving as the acting U.S. attorney for the district “indefinitely.”

In New Jersey, a judicial panel rejected Trump’s pick, Alina Habba, one of the president’s former personal attorneys who had no experience as a prosecutor before being named the state’s top federal law enforcement official. In response, the Trump administration moved to fire Desiree Leigh Grace, a career prosecutor and registered Republican whom the judicial panel named to replace Habba.

Trump later rescinded his nomination of Habba and appointed her as acting U.S. attorney. Experts have called both situations legally dubious and defense lawyers have argued the appointment violates federal statute prohibiting people whose nominations have been submitted to the Senate from serving in an acting role.

Habba’s appointment has reportedly halted federal court hearings, grand jury proceedings and plea deals in New Jersey federal courts due to questions over her authority to serve as acting U.S. attorney.

On Tuesday morning, Bloomberg Law reported that Trump used a similar move to keep Sigal Chattah as Nevada’s top federal prosecutor. Her interim term was also set to expire Tuesday.

Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor in L.A. who now serves as a professor at the Loyola Law School of Los Angeles, said the Trump administration’s actions reflected an unprecedented exploitation of a legal loophole.

“These laws have never been used, as far as I can see, to bypass the Senate confirmation process or the judicial one,” Levenson said. “The most serious consequences are if you’re going to end up with indictments that are not valid because they weren’t signed by a lawful U.S. Attorney.”

It remains unclear exactly what happens when the clock on Essayli’s acting tenure runs out next year.

Essayli’s time as L.A.’s top federal prosecutor has been marked by controversy.

Not long after getting the job, he moved to offer a no-jail plea deal to L.A. County sheriff’s Deputy Trevor Kirk — who had already been convicted of assault for using excessive force when he threw a woman to the ground and pepper-sprayed her while responding to a 2023 robbery in a Lancaster supermarket. The woman was not armed or committing a crime when Kirk confronted her, court records show.

Essayli’s decision, which was not prompted by new evidence regarding Kirk’s guilt or innocence, led several veteran prosecutors to resign.

Prosecutors who spoke to The Times on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation within the office have described Essayli as a chaotic and belligerent leader who seems more focused on advancing the president’s agenda than making decisions that comport with the law.

While Essayli has taken a hard line against demonstrators who allegedly broke the law during massive June protests against the Trump administration’s immigration raids in Southern California, a Times investigation shows he’s struggling to prove those cases in court.

Multiple federal law enforcement sources told The Times that a number of protest-related cases pushed by Essayli have failed to even secure grand jury indictments, where prosecutors face a significantly lower burden of proof than at a jury trial. Of the nearly 40 cases related to demonstrations or alleged interference with immigration raids that Essayli has filed, just seven have netted indictments, records show.

In one explosive moment, sources told The Times that Essayli screamed at prosecutors to disregard Department of Justice rules on bringing cases with weak evidence, insisting they must secure indictments for Bondi.

The U.S. attorney’s office dismissed The Times’ article, claiming it was based on “factual inaccuracies and anonymous gossip.” The statement offered no specifics about disputed facts and Bloomberg Law reported the same anecdote this week.

With Essayli’s fate now squarely in Trump’s hands, Levenson said it’s clear the White House is calling the shots for federal law enforcement in Southern California.

“I don’t think [Essayli] even pretends he’s making these decisions on his own,” Levenson said of Essayli. “I think he’s just the messenger here.”

Queally and Mejia reported from Los Angeles. Wilner reported from Washington, D.C. Times Staff Writer Seema Mehta in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

To bystanders at the federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles, it sounded as though U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli would not take no for an answer.

A prosecutor had the irate Trump administration appointee on speaker phone outside the grand jury room, and his screaming was audible, according to three law enforcement officials aware of the encounter who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The grand jury had just refused to indict someone accused of attacking federal law enforcement officers during protests against the recent immigration raids throughout Southern California, two of the officials said.

It was an exceedingly rare outcome after a type of hearing that routinely leads to federal charges being filed.

On the overheard call, according to three officials, Essayli, 39, told a subordinate to disregard the federal government’s “Justice Manual,” which directs prosecutors to only bring cases they can win at trial. Essayli barked that prosecutors should press on and secure indictments as directed by U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, according to three officials.

Court records show the reason for Essayli’s frustration.

While his office has filed felony cases against at least 38 people for alleged misconduct that either took place during last month’s protests or near the sites of immigration raids, many have already been dismissed or reduced to misdemeanor charges.

The three officials who spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity said prosecutors have struggled to get several protest-related cases past grand juries, which need only to find probable cause that a crime has been committed in order to move forward. That is a much lower bar than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard required for a criminal conviction.

Five cases have been dismissed without prejudice — meaning they could be refiled — and records show nine have been filed as misdemeanors, which do not require a grand jury indictment to proceed. In some cases, prosecutors reduced charges against defendants to misdemeanors after repeatedly falling short at the grand jury stage, according to three federal law enforcement officials.

Essayli declined to be interviewed for this article. A statement provided by his office on Tuesday accused The Times of spreading “factual inaccuracies and anonymous gossip,” but offered no specifics or further comment in response to questions.

“The U.S. Attorney’s Office will continue working unapologetically to charge all those who assault our agents or impede our federal investigations,” the statement said.

Legal experts said Essayli’s low number of indictments raised concerns about the strength of the cases he is filing.

Carley Palmer, a former federal prosecutor in L.A. who is now a partner at Halpern May Ybarra Gelberg, said the grand jury’s repeated rejection of cases was “a strong indication that the priorities of the prosecutor’s office are out of sync with the priorities of the general community.”

Essayli has won indictments in some serious cases, including two where defendants are accused of throwing or planning to throw Molotov cocktails at L.A. law enforcement officers, and a case where defendants allegedly fired a paintball gun at federal police. But in total, he has only secured seven indictments, which usually need to be obtained no later than 21 days after the filing of a criminal complaint. Three other cases have been resolved via plea deal, records show.

High-ranking Justice Department officials have repeatedly praised his work.

“My friend, U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, is a champion for law and order who has done superlative work to prosecute rioters for attacking and obstructing law enforcement in Los Angeles,” Bondi said in a statement to The Times.

Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi speaks during a news conference at the Justice Department on June 6 in Washington.

(Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Associated Press)

But legal experts and some of Essayli’s own prosecutors say he’s stretching legal limits to serve as Trump’s attack dog in L.A.

“It’s just generally a culture of ‘if Bill asks you to jump, you ask how high,’” said one prosecutor who feared retaliation. “Any case he wants to charge, find a way to make it a yes.”

Questions about Essayli’s effectiveness come at a critical time for the former California Assembly member. Bondi appointed him in early April, giving him 120 days to serve as interim U.S. attorney until receiving Senate approval. If he is not confirmed by then, a panel of federal judges will have the opportunity to appoint him — or someone else — to the position.

Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla of California raised concerns about Essayli’s leadership of the office in interviews with The Times, and a direct approval from the bench is no sure thing. Earlier this month, a federal judicial panel blocked Trump’s choice for U.S. attorney in upstate New York after the time limit for Senate confirmation had expired.

On Tuesday, another judicial panel declined to appoint New Jersey’s interim federal prosecutor, Alina Habba, one of Trump’s former personal lawyers. Bondi, however, decried the judges for going “rogue,” fired their choice for U.S. attorney and reappointed Habba. Legal experts say the move is unprecedented.

Meghan Blanco, a former federal prosecutor in L.A. who serves as defense counsel to one of the protesters who is facing charges, said the cases are faltering in part because of unreliable information provided by immigration agents claiming to be victims.

“Frankly, they’re not deserving of prosecution,” she said. “What is being alleged isn’t a federal crime, or it simply did not happen.”

Blanco represents Jose Mojica, who was accused of pushing a federal officer in Paramount on June 7.

According to an investigation summary of the incident reviewed by The Times, a U.S. Border Patrol officer claimed a man was screaming in his face that he was going to “shoot him,” then punched him. The officer said he and other agents started chasing the man, but were “stopped by two other males,” later identified as Mojica and Bryan Ramos-Brito.

Blanco said she obtained social media videos showing no such chase took place and presented them at Mojica’s first court appearance. The charges were soon dropped.

“The agent lied and said he was in hot pursuit of a person who punched him,” Blanco said. “The entirety of the affidavit is false.”

Felony charges against Ramos-Brito and two related defendants, Ashley and Joceline Rodriguez, were also dismissed, though prosecutors refiled misdemeanor cases against them.

Christian Camacho-Cerna, the man who allegedly punched an agent, has been indicted. He has pleaded not guilty, with trial set for next month.

Similar issues arose in the case of Andrea Velez, who was charged on June 25 with assaulting a federal officer. The criminal complaint alleged Velez, who is 4 feet 11 inches, stood in the path of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer with her arms extended, striking his head and chest when they collided.

Diane Bass, Velez’s attorney, said the incident occurred when masked, unidentified men in plainclothes pulled up to question a downtown L.A. street vendor.

Velez had just been dropped off for work when some of the masked men ran at her and one shoved her to the ground, Bass said. Velez, fearing she was being abducted, held up her work bag to shield herself.

Bass requested body-worn camera footage and witness statements cited in the complaint. Soon after, she said, the prosecutor dismissed the case.

One federal law enforcement official not authorized to speak publicly said concerns are growing among prosecutors about the accuracy of statements by federal immigration agents that serve as the basis of criminal charges.

“There are a lot of hot-headed [Customs and Border Protection] officers who are kind of arresting first and asking questions later. We’re finding there’s not probable cause to support it,” said the prosecutor who requested anonymity over concerns of repercussions.

A demonstrator waves a Mexican flag in front of a dumpster fire after another night of unrest during a protest against immigration raids on June 8, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

One case under close scrutiny is that of Adrian Martinez, a 20-year-old charged in a criminal complaint last month with conspiracy to impede a federal officer.

Martinez said he was on a break from his job at Walmart when he spotted immigration agents chasing down a maintenance worker, and told them to leave the man alone.

Video footage shows Martinez being thrown to the ground and shoved into a truck, which he said took him to a parking structure.

Once there, Martinez said he was told he’d been arrested for assaulting a federal officer by striking an agent in the face and breaking his glasses. Martinez, who weighs around 150 pounds, said the agents arresting him pointed to the colleague he was being accused of attacking, who looked “like a grizzly bear.”

“I don’t even remember you,” Martinez recalled saying. “It just seemed like they were trying to get me to say like, ‘yes, you assaulted him,’ but I knew I didn’t.”

The next day, Essayli posted a photo on X of Martinez, still in his blue Walmart vest. Martinez, he wrote, had been arrested “for an allegation of punching a border patrol agent in the face.”

The criminal complaint makes no reference to a punch and video taken at the scene does not clearly show Martinez strike anyone. Federal prosecutors instead charged Martinez with conspiracy to impede a federal officer, alleging he blocked federal law enforcement vehicles with his car and then later a trash can.

Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office, previously told The Times that complaints do not always include “the full scope of a defendant’s conduct, or the evidence that will be presented at trial.”

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said the agency could not comment on cases under active litigation.

“Our officers are facing a surge in assaults and attacks against them as they put their lives on the line to enforce our nation’s laws,” the DHS statement said.

Charges against nonviolent defendants have repeatedly raised alarm bells among current and former federal prosecutors. In early June, union leader David Huerta was charged with conspiracy to impede a federal officer for allegedly interfering with immigration enforcement actions in the downtown L.A. garment district. Legal experts said Huerta’s conduct did not appear criminal.

“Where do you draw the line between an organized protest and a conspiracy to impede?” Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, asked last month. “It’ll actually be interesting to see if a grand jury indicts these cases.”

Huerta has denied all wrongdoing and his attorney did not respond to a request for comment. A deadline of Aug. 5 looms for prosecutors to secure an indictment.

Court filings show some prosecutors appear to be refusing to sign their names to contentious cases.

An indictment returned against Alejandro Orellana — who is accused of conspiracy and aiding in civil disorder for passing out gas masks at a protest scene in early June — was only signed by Essayli and his second-in-command, Jennifer Waier, records show. Such cases are typically handled by rank-and-file assistant U.S. attorneys.

In early May, when Essayli pushed to offer a lenient plea deal to L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy Trevor Kirk months after a jury convicted him of assaulting a woman during a 2023 arrest, several prosecutors refused to sign the document asking for the deal, and some later resigned.

Times staff writer Kevin Rector contributed to this report.

The U.S. Justice Department has launched an investigation into whether California, its interscholastic sports federation and the Jurupa Unified School District are violating the civil rights of cisgender girls by allowing transgender students to compete in school sports, federal officials announced Wednesday.

The Justice Department is also throwing its support behind a pending lawsuit alleging similar violations of girls’ rights in the Riverside Unified School District, said U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, who oversees much of the Los Angeles region, and Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

Transgender track athletes have come under intense scrutiny in recent months in both Jurupa Valley and Riverside, with anti-LGBTQ+ activists attacking them on social media and screaming opposition to their competing at school meets.

Essayli and Dhillon, both Californians appointed under President Trump, have long fought against transgender rights in the state. Their announcements came one day after Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from California for allowing transgender youth to participate in sports.

The legal actions are just the latest attempts by the Trump administration to scale back transgender rights nationwide, including by bringing the fight to California — which has the nation’s largest queer population and some of its most robust LGBTQ+ legal protections — and targeting individual student athletes in the state.

Both Trump in his threats Tuesday and Essayli and Dhillon in their announcement of the investigation Wednesday appeared to reference the recent success of a 16-year-old transgender track athlete at Jurupa Valley High School named AB Hernandez. Trump wrongly suggested that Hernandez had won “everything” at a recent meet — which Hernandez didn’t do.

In a comment to The Times on Wednesday, Hernandez’s mother, Nereyda Hernandez, said it was heartbreaking to see her child being attacked “simply for being who they are,” and despite following all California laws and policies for competing.

“My child is a transgender student-athlete, a hardworking, disciplined, and passionate young person who just wants to play sports, continue to build friendships, and grow into their fullest potential like any other child,” her mother said.

The mother of another transgender high school track athlete in Riverside County who is the subject of the pending lawsuit the Justice Department is now backing declined to comment Wednesday.

The Justice Department said it had sent letters of legal notice to California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, the California Interscholastic Federation and Jurupa Unified.

The U.S. Department of Education had previously announced in February that it was investigating the CIF for allowing transgender athletes to compete. Dhillon said the two federal departments would coordinate their investigations.

Bonta has defended state laws protecting transgender youth, students and athletes, and advised school systems and other institutions in the state, such as hospitals, to adhere to state LGBTQ+ laws — even in the face of various Trump executive orders aimed at curtailing the rights of and healthcare for transgender youth. On Wednesday, his office said it remained “committed to defending and upholding California laws.”

Scott Roark, a spokesman for the California Department of Education, said his agency could not comment. Jacquie Paul, a spokesperson for Jurupa Unified, said the school system had yet to receive the letter Wednesday, and “without further information” could not comment. A spokesperson for the Riverside Unified School District also declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.

The CIF, in a statement, said it “values all of our student-athletes and we will continue to uphold our mission of providing students with the opportunity to belong, connect, and compete while complying with California law and Education Code.”

However, the sports federation also changed its rules for the upcoming 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships, saying a cisgender girl who is bumped from qualifying for event finals by a transgender athlete would still be allowed to compete and would also be awarded the medal for whichever place they would have claimed were the transgender athlete not competing.

The changes brought renewed criticism from advocates on both sides of the political issue, including Chino Valley Unified school board President Sonja Shaw. Shaw is a Trump supporter running for state schools superintendent who has challenged pro-LGBTQ+ laws statewide and supports the latest investigation. She said that, in making the changes, CIF was “admitting” that girls “are being pushed out of their own sports.”

Dhillon said her office’s “pattern or practice” investigation will consider whether California’s laws and the CIF policies violate Title IX, a 1972 federal civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination in educational programs and activities that receive federal funding.

Title IX has been used in the past to win rights for transgender people, but the Trump administration has taken a strikingly different view of the law — and cited it as a reason transgender rights must be rolled back.

Dhillon said the law “exists to protect women and girls in education,” that it is “perverse to allow males to compete against girls, invade their private spaces, and take their trophies,” and that her division would “aggressively defend women’s hard-fought rights to equal educational opportunities.”

Essayli said in a statement that his office would “work tirelessly to protect girls’ sports and stop anyone — public officials included — from violating women’s civil rights.”

LGBTQ+ advocates, civic institutions in California and many Democratic lawmakers in the state have denounced the framing of transgender inclusion in sports as diminishing the rights of women and girls and accused Trump and other Republicans of attacking transgender people — about 1% of the U.S. population — simply because they make for an easy and vulnerable political target.

Kristi Hirst, co-founder of the public education advocacy group Our Schools USA, said the Justice Department’s actions amounted to “bullying minors and using taxpayer resources to do so,” and that a “better use of public dollars would be for the Justice Department to affirm that all kids possess civil rights, and protect the very students being targeted today.”

The “pattern or practice” investigation is the second such investigation that Dhillon’s office has launched in the L.A. region in as many months. It’s also investigating Los Angeles County over its process for issuing gun permits.

Essayli’s separate decision to back the Riverside lawsuit adds another wrinkle to an already complicated case.

The group Save Girls’ Sports is suing over the inclusion of a transgender athlete in a girls’ track meet in October, a decision they allege unfairly bumped a cisgender girl from competition, and over a decision by high school officials to block students from wearing shirts that read, “IT’S COMMON SENSE. XX [does not equal] XY,” a reference to the different chromosome pairings of biological females and males.

Julianne Fleischer, an attorney with Advocates for Faith & Freedom who is representing Save Girls’ Sports, said Wednesday that Essayli’s decision to weigh in on behalf of the group was welcome.

“This case has always been about common sense, fairness, and the plain meaning of the law,” Fleischer said in a statement. “Girls’ sports were never meant to be a social experiment. They exist so that girls can win, lead and thrive on a level playing field.”

It was unclear how the case would be affected by Essayli’s interest.

The state and school district are asking for the lawsuit to be dismissed. A hearing is scheduled next month.

Essayli, formerly a state Assembly member from Riverside County, made his name in politics in part by attacking what he has called the “woke” policies of California’s liberal majority in Sacramento. Shortly before he was appointed as U.S. attorney last month, other California lawmakers blocked a bill he introduced that would have banned transgender athletes from female sports.

Hernandez, the mother of the targeted Jurupa Valley athlete, said Trump and other officials were bullying children by “weaponizing misinformation and fear instead of embracing truth, compassion and respect,” and asked Trump to reconsider.

“I respectfully request you to open your heart and mind to learn about the LGBTQ+ community,” she said, “not from the voices of fear or division, but from the people living these lives with courage, love and dignity.”