Bill Essayli Disqualification Ruling Isn’t Enough, Defense Says

Bill Essayli can’t continue to use the power he enjoyed as the Central District of California’s acting US attorney under a different title, defense lawyers argued as they urged a judge to reconsider part of his ruling disqualifying Essayli from that position.

Judge J. Michael Seabright disqualified Essayli as acting US attorney in October. Since then, he has served as the office’s “first assistant US attorney”—a designation the judge allowed—but his supervising of cases is still unconstitutional, the federal public defender representing two defendants said Monday. His work still makes him an “inferior officer” that the Senate must confirm, they said.

Seabright’s order “left the defense’s constitutional arguments unresolved,” the defense attorneys argued. They urged the judge to, at the very least, bar Essayli from overseeing the prosecution of their clients and dismiss their charges without prejudice.

“The Court should reject the notion that there are other hidden paths available,” their motion said. “If Congress had intended some never-confirmed inferior officer to wield powers equivalent to those of a U.S. Attorney indefinitely—just without the title—it would reasonably have been expected to say so, just as it did with respect to the aforementioned express provisions.”

Seabright, a President George W. Bush appointee from Hawaii assigned to this matter after judges in the Central District of California were recused, ruled late last month that the Los Angeles-based Essayli had been unlawfully serving since he stepped down as interim US attorney and took the acting role at the end of July. He may no longer “perform the functions and duties of the United States Attorney as Acting United States Attorney,” Seabright wrote.

However, the judge permitted Essayli to stay on as the office’s first assistant. He still runs the US Attorney’s Office there, as the top role is vacant. Essayli said in a post on X the same day that “nothing is changing” in light of Seabright’s order.

The judge also declined to dismiss charges in three cases where defense attorneys sought Essayli’s disqualification, because other prosecutors lawfully signed the indictments and that Essayli’s involvement didn’t appear to cause issues with their cases.

The fight over Essayli’s control of the US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles is one of several that President Donald Trump’s Justice Department has faced over their designation of top federal prosecutors without local approval.

But Essayli, in his current role, still uses powers “broad and enduring enough that they make him at least an inferior officer” that requires Senate confirmation, like those with the actual US attorney title, the motion said.

“The Constitution gives the executive a choice: follow one of those many flexible paths, or secure confirmation,” the attorneys wrote. “The solution is not to invent a fifth, blank-check option. Congress has never written an office of ‘first assistant’ into the US Code, and it has never exempted such an office from the confirmation requirement.”

The case is United States v. Ramirez, C.D. Cal., No. 5:25-cr-00264, motion filed 11/10/25.