Trump’s LA Prosecutor Orders Cases His Staff Say Lack Evidence (1)

In the three-plus months Bill Essayli has run the Los Angeles US Attorney’s Office, he has ignored and overruled the recommendations of senior prosecutors, instructed staff to disregard Justice Department policies, and forced lawyers to redo indictment failures before new grand juries, said multiple lawyers with knowledge of the matters.

Essayli’s pattern of yelling at career attorneys to pursue MAGA-aligned cases despite their warnings of insufficient evidence has contributed to an exodus from the LA-based district, according to the attorneys, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal.

Employees say Essayli has informed them that the office is down more than 80 attorneys this year—approximately one-third of the legal staff serving 20 million residents. Dozens have left since Essayli took the helm as the district’s chief law enforcement official, according to interviews, court filings, and LinkedIn profiles.

“People who said that they would work their entire careers at the Department of Justice are leaving because they are facing moral challenges,” said Carley Palmer, a former deputy chief who left the office last year.

Bloomberg Law spoke with more than 30 current and former employees in the office and other lawyers who interact with the team.

Essayli, 39, who was previously a federal prosecutor and a twice-elected Republican state assemblyman, overhauled his office’s mission since becoming temporary US attorney in April.

He’s talked to staff about using the position to criminally charge politicians, judges, or other officials who block the Trump agenda, according to four people who were either part of those conversations or briefed on them.

In a July 22 radio interview with Glenn Beck, Essayli said he’s “up against very hostile judges” and inherited an office “with left-leaning attorneys” that he’s trying to get “reoriented and reprioritized.”

Some of his decisions reflect priorities across Trump’s DOJ, like moving away from corporate crime investigations to emphasize immigration enforcement. But other actions stand out to subordinates as advancing Essayli’s own political interests from a legislative tenure in which he once declared that if an opportunity arises “to embarrass the Democrats, I’m going to do it.”

Essayli declined to be interviewed for this story.

In response to a series of written questions, his office said in a statement: “The allegations cited are based on inaccurate, misleading information and gossip, not facts. Our office will continue its longstanding work of protecting the public and prosecuting criminals.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi, who visited with Essayli and his prosecutors earlier in July, said, “My friend US 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. This Department of Justice is proud of Bill, and he has my complete support as he continues working to protect Californians and Make America Safe Again.”

After this article published, a DOJ spokesperson said that Essayli will be resigning as interim US attorney as soon as Tuesday, just as his term is about to expire. He will then receive a new “acting” appointment from the Trump administration a day later—a maneuver that followed judiciary inaction on appointing him indefinitely.

Trump Agenda

In his early months on the job, Essayli has pursued cases in line with the Trump administration’s culture war with California. He’s filed civil lawsuits blaming the state’s animal welfare rules for driving up egg prices nationwide and challenging transgender student athlete participation.

It’s his leadership on criminal enforcement, however, that’s caused internal tension as the immigration crackdown in LA sparked civil unrest, multiple attorneys said.

His strident communication style exacerbated those concerns, they added.

Essayli shouted “Fuck the Justice Manual” at a team of his attorneys pursuing an indictment stemming from the protests, said four current and former federal prosecutors familiar with the incident.

Essayli’s reference to DOJ’s handbook of prosecution rules came during a break from lawyers’ presentation to a grand jury. A grand juror overheard the exchange, they said.

In a separate episode, three former prosecutors said he forced staff against their counsel to prioritize prosecution of LA resident Alejandro Orellana for distributing face shields to protesters—a case that pitted Trump’s base on social media against those supporting demonstrators.

Orellana was indicted by a federal grand jury in July on charges of aiding and abetting civil disorder, but only after Essayli went to the top of the Justice Department to salvage the case, said two people with knowledge of the matter.

Under DOJ’s policy manual, the civil disturbance charge required consultation with the national security division in Washington before it could be brought to a grand jury.

When the head of NSD recommended against the charge, Essayli elevated it to the deputy attorney general’s office, the two sources said. The DAG’s office gave him the go-ahead in a rare but not unheard of disagreement.

DOJ spokespeople didn’t comment on the matter.

The original attorneys have been removed from the case, which is now being handled solely by Essayli’s top deputy.

Essayli also rejected office supervisors’ advice not to charge a 20-year-old Walmart employee for assaulting an immigration officer, said two people aware of the action. As video of the arrest went viral suggesting it was the border patrol agents rather than the US citizen employee, Adrian Martinez, using physical force, an FBI agent felt there was insufficient evidence and declined to sign a complaint attesting probable cause to a judge, said a prosecutor with knowledge of the investigation.

Essayli replied to section chiefs that if they couldn’t get an agent to sign an affidavit, he’d find one himself, that prosecutor said.

Within a day, another agent signed off on a different charge of impeding an officer. But Essayli’s social media post a day earlier asserting he’d be charged with punching a border patrol agent remains on X.

In other cases, when grand juries have decided not to indict, Essayli has instructed prosecutors to present the case to a different grand jury, without seeking new evidence first, three lawyers said.

The office’s recent surge in grand jury denials, reported on earlier by the Los Angeles Times, is a considerable departure from recent history, former prosecutors said. That’s because grand juries have a much lower bar of proof to return indictments than a trial jury needs to convict.

According to two of those lawyers, he’s instructed prosecutors to re-present LA cases with grand juries in Orange County, which was solidly Republican until 2016. The district under Essayli’s purview stretches north along the coast to San Luis Obispo County, and east to cover the inland counties of San Bernardino and Riverside, which flipped for Trump in 2024.

Essayli has also indicated to staff that he’s saving more controversial work for after the 120-day interim window ends, several employees say.

He’s considered dismissing a major investor fraud indictment of fast-food executive Andrew Wiederhorn after he secures a longer-term appointment as chief prosecutor, four people familiar with the decision said. Shortly after his arrival, Essayli privately met with Wiederhorn’s defense lawyers without inviting the prosecutors on the case, the sources added.

Wiederhorn, a Trump donor and chairman and founder of FAT Brands Inc., which owns Fatburger and Johnny Rockets, was indicted in 2024 on allegations he concealed from the IRS $47 million he took from FAT and its affiliate that he improperly characterized as shareholder loans.

Wiederhorn separately pleaded guilty two decades ago to federal felony counts related to his business and financial dealings at Wilshire Credit Corp. He’s described in a DOJ news release as a “serial tax cheat.”

In June, prosecutors and Wiederhorn’s defense team asked the judge to delay the trial, which is now scheduled for January.

The Los Angeles Times previously reported on Essayli’s handling of the Wiederhorn prosecution.

State Assembly

Essayli, the son of Lebanese immigrants, graduated from Cal State Poly-Pomona. While earning a law degree from Chapman University, he studied under now-disbarred former Trump lawyer John Eastman, whom Essayli has defended for upholding “the sanctity of our elections.”

Back in his earlier stint as an assistant US attorney, colleagues say they found it jarring how Essayli—in a workplace that frowned upon political conversation—openly discussed his embrace of Trump early in the 2016 presidential campaign. He stood out for an aggressive approach to bringing charges, multiple former prosecutors said.

When leaving the office to run for state assembly in 2018, he told prosecutors in a farewell speech they should focus on convictions, without worrying so much about appeals, according to three people present.

He lost that first bid for office but became the first Muslim to win a California assembly seat in 2022. Essayli raised his profile as a far-right provocateur—introducing legislation that would’ve required schools to inform parents their children might be transgender, becoming a regular on conservative cable news, and getting into shouting matches with his Democratic counterparts.

When Bondi appointed him to lead the US attorney’s office, he resigned from the assembly, months after getting re-elected in 2024.

In a news release, he parroted Trump’s “you spit, we hit” line, and he defended the handcuffing of Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) at a media briefing by the Department of Homeland Security. Essayli indicated to Breitbart News an openness to arresting Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).

Court Deadline

Trump has never formally nominated Essayli, and whether he stays on indefinitely—following the expiration of his 120-day interim term this week—would have traditionally depended on the judges of the US District Court for the Central District of California. But by not acting on the decision, the judges opened the door for Trump to extend Essayli under the Vacancies Reform Act.

Federal courts in Albany, N.Y., and New Jersey both recently declined to appoint the administration’s interim US attorneys when their terms ran out.

In both of those situations, DOJ gave the prosecutors new appointments.

Multiple veterans of the LA office said having to win approval from the district’s judges was likely why Essayli tried to postpone a few of the most controversial matters.

For example, his office tried pushing to August the sentencing of a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy convicted of felony excessive force. That continuance was denied, so prosecutors asked the judge to approve a “post-trial plea agreement” that would reduce his conviction to a misdemeanor and release him on probation.

Former and current federal prosecutors say Essayli’s mandate to prosecute immigration cases is absorbing the time and energy of attorneys at all levels of the office.

His style has driven many out the door, even those without new jobs, multiple attorneys said.

The departures have included the criminal chief, appellate leader, and public corruption head—the latter of whom was a longtime friend of Essayli’s who resigned over his post-conviction lenience for the deputy sheriff, former prosecutors said.

Notably, the head of his immigration enforcement unit is leaving, and a veteran lawyer who was one of Essayli’s top advisers—known as a Republican aligned with Trump administration priorities—stepped down last month, multiple people said.

“When you lose a number of prosecutors and you start to divert resources onto smaller cases, that other work is not going to get addressed,” said Connie Woodhead, who retired after 30 years in the office in 2023.

Some of the holdovers are bracing for whether Essayli survives much longer as their boss, but his refusal to acknowledge the word “interim” in his title may suggest the answer. Two of his subordinates say that when pressed on the topic, Essayli insists he be referred to as simply the US attorney.

When Beck asked Essayli if he was out of the job by the end of July, he replied, “Potentially. We’ve got some tricks up our sleeves.”