Bill Essayli might just rein in the madness of California electeds, prosecuting political corruption and enforcing presidential orders.
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Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Tuesday that California state lawmaker Bill Essayli, a Republican from Riverside, will run the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. Covering 20 million people, including everybody in Los Angeles, it is by far the largest district in the nation, larger in population than every other state but Texas and Florida.
The announcement sent in-state reporters to area hospitals with a severe case of the fantods. “Trump picks lightning-rod California legislator to be US attorney in Los Angeles,” trumpeted Politico. In a follow-up, Politico upgraded the modifier to “bomb-hurling,” while the Sacramento Bee preferred to describe the 39-year-old former U.S. prosecutor as “outspoken.”
Among Essayli’s perceived threats to the republic, the Los Angeles Times noted that he has “criticized COVID-19 restrictions, critical race theory and California policies aimed at protecting LGBTQ+ students. He has pushed especially hard for ‘parental rights’ measures that would mandate parents be informed whenever a child identifies as transgender or asks to change their name or pronouns at school.”
“Essayli has been a strong supporter of Trump over the years,” the Times further noted. Following Trump’s conviction on charges “tied to a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election, Essayli posted on Facebook that he looked forward to electing Trump as president ‘to restore the rule of law and our constitutional principles.’”
Sworn in on Wednesday by Judge Dolly M. Gee, Essayli “said he will prioritize the enforcement of federal immigration laws against sanctuary jurisdictions,” said attorney Julie Hamill, whose own January 31 complaint triggered a federal investigation of California schools. She emphasized “his authority to prosecute public corruption. He knows where all the bodies are buried. This is a great day for Californians.” (Disclosure: Hamill is a colleague at the California Policy Center, where I am president.)
Essayli doesn’t neatly fit what many may think is the classic profile of a Trump nominee. He’s a Muslim, for one thing, the son of parents who fled their native Lebanon during that country’s cataclysmic civil war in the 1980s. They settled in California’s Inland Empire, two sprawling Southern California desert counties east of Los Angeles in which the most notable city is Palm Springs. A graduate of nearby Cal Poly Pomona and Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law, he interned briefly in the George W. Bush White House Counsel’s Office. He went to work as a prosecutor in the Riverside County District Attorney’s office and then, while serving as an attorney in the Central District, was part of the team that prosecuted the 2015 terror attack in San Bernardino.
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