Trump ally and rising GOP star Essayli named L.A.’s top federal prosecutor

Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi has appointed Riverside Assemblymember Bill Essayli — considered a rising and controversial Republican voice in California — as U.S. attorney for Los Angeles and surrounding areas, according to an email sent to the office’s staff and reviewed by The Times on Tuesday.

“Bill is excited to get started and will be sworn in tomorrow,” acting U.S. Atty. Joseph McNally wrote in the email. He noted that Essayli had previously served as a prosecutor in the same office and called his return a “homecoming.”

Sources familiar with the matter but not authorized to discuss it publicly said that Essayli’s appointment is as interim U.S. attorney, and that he will still need to be nominated by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate in order to fill the position on a permanent basis.

Essayli, who was elected to represent Riverside in 2022, has made his name in politics in part by attacking what he calls the “woke” policies of California’s liberal majority in Sacramento. He will helm the Central District of California, the most populous U.S. attorney’s district in the country, covering some 20 million people across seven counties.

Essayli, 39, has been a strong supporter of Trump over the years. Last May, after Trump was convicted of felony crimes 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.”

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.

The same issue has been a focus of the Trump administration, which last week announced it was investigating the California Department of Education for allegedly withholding such information from parents.

U.S. attorneys are political appointees, and turnover in such posts is common in new administrations. However, Essayli’s selection comes amid robust efforts by Trump to install loyalists at the highest levels of government, including in law enforcement. It also follows allegations that the Trump administration is hiring and firing Justice Department attorneys based purely on politics and perceived loyalty to Trump and his allies.

Last week, the White House terminated Adam Schleifer, a federal prosecutor in L.A. who had been leading an investigation into a pro-Trump business executive.

McNally had been serving as acting U.S. attorney since Martin E. Estrada, a Biden appointee, resigned in January.

In his email Tuesday, McNally praised Essayli as a strong pick and his selection by Bondi as a vote of confidence in the staff of the Central District office, which he said is doing “incredible work.”

“Those of us who have worked with Bill can attest to this commitment to public service and making the people of this district safe,” he wrote. “It is a testament to the Office that the Attorney General has appointed one of our alums to this role.”

During Trump’s first term, then-Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions appointed Nicola Hanna as the interim U.S. attorney in L.A. The following month, Trump nominated Hanna to the office and he was later confirmed by the Senate. Essayli could follow a similar path as Hanna, though Trump’s intentions for him were not immediately clear.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Essayli also declined to comment when asked earlier Tuesday whether he was being appointed to the position.

Essayli is part of a cohort of Riverside conservatives with ties to the White House, several of whom met with Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, the president’s sons, just days before the election. The group included Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who is now running for governor, and evangelical Pastor Tim Thompson, leader of the 412 Church in Murrieta.

Essayli has worked in the past, including on challenges to state COVID-19 restrictions, with Harmeet Dhillon, another conservative lawyer from the state whom Trump nominated to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

Assemblymember Bill Essayli speaks about transgender athletes competing in girls high school sports at a Riverside Unified School District meeting in 2024.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Essayli is the son of Lebanese immigrants and the first person in his family to have graduated from college, according to his Assembly biography. He is Muslim, and in the past has said, “My religion drives my moral compass, but it’s not everything that I am.”

A graduate of Chapman University School of Law, Essayli served as a local prosecutor in the Riverside County district attorney’s office, then as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District, where he handled cases dealing with “violent and organized crime, identity theft, bank fraud, securities fraud, white-collar fraud, obstruction of justice, and a multitude of other matters,” according to his biography.

He was also part of the team of prosecutors that handled the San Bernardino terrorist attack and mass shooting in 2015, McNally noted in his email.

Essayli first ran for office in 2018 with a focus on California’s gas tax, and lost. In 2022, he ran again and won with a focus on school issues — blasting “woke warriors on the left” for miseducating local children, including on the “sins of our past.”

After winning, Essayli became a contentious colleague in Sacramento.

Assemblymember Bill Essayli (R-Corona) speaks during a news conference in Sacramento in 2023.

(Rahul Lal / CalMatters)

He has repeatedly been removed from committees by Democratic leaders, who have criticized him both for not showing up for subcommittee hearings and for directing personal attacks at his fellow Assembly members, including on social media.

Essayli has received attention in Republican circles beyond California for a bill he introduced that would have mandated schools inform parents of children who identify as transgender or express an interest in changing their pronouns or otherwise socially transitioning in school.

The assemblymember cast the measure as a “parental rights” bill, but LGBTQ+ advocates sharply criticized it as an “outing” measure that would endanger children in unaccepting homes. The bill never gained traction in Sacramento, but some school boards introduced similar measures at the local level. Democrats in Sacramento responded by pushing through a law barring such policies statewide.

Trump campaigned heavily against transgender rights during the election and has since introduced several executive orders attempting to scale back those rights, including in schools, sports and healthcare settings. He, like Essayli, has also claimed that such policies are “common sense.”

Essayli has accused liberal educators and lawmakers in California of running a “brainwashing operation” in schools where they tell kindergarten students that they can “pick one of 20 genders” and then “brainwash” children into thinking that their parents will kick them out of their homes if they tell them what is going on.

Gubernatorial candidate John Cox, left, and Assembly candidate Bill Essayli load boxes of signatures for a gas tax repeal initiative on April 20, 2018. Essayli lost in his 2018 bid for office.

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Essayli said his “fear is that they’re going to start offering medical services at schools,” where state educators and other outside medical care providers such as Planned Parenthood would start providing students as young as 12 with hormone therapy and other medical treatments at school without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

“That’s coming down the line here,” Essayli claimed, without providing evidence.

Trump has made similar false claims about children receiving serious medical interventions to change their genders while at school and unbeknownst to their parents.

On Tuesday, California lawmakers held a hearing for an Essayli bill that would ban transgender athletes from female sports. Conservative commentator Matt Walsh testified in support of the bill, which was ultimately blocked in committee.

Times writer Jessica Garrison contributed to this report.