Atty. General Pam Bondi appointed Riverside Assembly Bill Essayli – considered a growing and controversial republican voice in California – as an American prosecutor in Los Angeles and surrounding regions, according to an email sent to the office staff and examined by Times on Tuesday.
“Bill is delighted to start and will be sworn tomorrow”, acting in Atty. Joseph McNally wrote in the email. He noted that Assayli had previously been a prosecutor in the same office and described his return as “return home”.
Familiar sources with the question but not authorized to discuss it publicly said that the appointment of Essayli is as an American interim lawyer and that it will always have to be appointed by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate in order to provide the post of permanent.
Essayli, who was elected to represent Riverside in 2022, did his name in part in politics by attacking what he calls the “awakened” policies of the liberal majority of California in Sacramento. He will direct the California central district, the country’s most populous American lawyer district, covering some 20 million people in seven counties.
Essayli, 39, has been a fervent supporter of Trump over the years. Last May, after Trump was found guilty of criminal crimes related to a plan to illegally influence the 2016 elections, Essayli posted on Facebook that he was looking forward to electing Trump as president “to restore the rule of law and our constitutional principles”.
He criticized COVVI-19 restrictions, the critical theory of the race and California policies aimed at protecting LGBTQ +students. He pushed particularly strongly for the measures of “parental rights” which would oblige parents to be informed each time a child identifies himself as transgender or asks to change his name or their pronouns at school.
The same problem was an opportunity for the Trump administration, which announced last week that it was investigating the California Department of Education for having allegedly retained this information to the parents.
American lawyers are appointed political and turnover in such positions is common in new administrations. However, the selection of Essayli occurs in the middle of Trump’s solid efforts to install loyalists at the highest level of government, including in the application of laws. He also follows the allegations that the Trump administration hires and dismissed lawyers from the Ministry of Justice based solely on policy and loyalty perceived towards Trump and his allies.
Last week, the White House dismissed Adam Schleifer, a federal prosecutor who had conducted an investigation into a pro-Trump business manager.
McALLY had been an acting American lawyer since Martin E. Estrada, a named Biden, resigned in January.
In his email on Tuesday, McNally praised Essayli as a strong choice and her leap selection as a vote of trust in the staff of the central district office, who, according to him, does “incredible work”.
“Those of us who worked with Bill can attest to this commitment to the public service and make the inhabitants of this district,” he wrote. “It is a testimony to the office that the Attorney General appointed one of our elders to this role.”
During Trump’s first term, then-Atty. General Jeff Sessions appointed Nicola Hanna as an American interim lawyer in Los Angeles the following month, Trump appointed Hanna to the office and was then confirmed by the Senate. Essayli could follow a path similar to Hanna, although Trump’s intentions for him were not immediately clear.
The White House did not respond to a request for comments on Tuesday. Essayli also refused to comment when he was asked on Tuesday he was appointed to this position.
Essayli is part of a cohort of riverside conservatives with links with the White House, many of whom met Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, the president’s sons, a few days before the elections. The group included the sheriff of the county of Riverside, Chad Bianco, who is now presented to the post of governor, and the evangelical pastor Tim Thompson, church church 412 of Murrieta.
Essayli has worked in the past, including on the challenges of COVVI-19 state restrictions, with Harmeet Dhillon, another state conservative lawyer that Trump has appointed to lead the Division of Civic Rights of the Ministry of Justice.
The member of the Assembly Bill Essayli talks about transgender athletes who participate in the sports of the girls’ high school during a meeting of the unified school district of Riverside in 2024.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Essayli is the son of Lebanese immigrants and the first person in his family to have obtained his university diploma, according to his biography of the Assembly. He is Muslim, and in the past said: “My religion leads my moral compass, but that’s not all I am.”
A graduate of the Chapman University School of Law, Essayli was a local prosecutor at the District Prosecutor’s Office of the County of Riverside, then as an assistant American prosecutor for the central district, where he dealt with cases dealing with “violent and organized crime, theft of identity, banking fraud, fraud in terms of titles, the fraud to white cols White passes fraud.
He was also part of the team of prosecutors who managed the terrorist attack of San Bernardino and the mass fire in 2015, noted McNally in his email.
Essayli presented himself for the first time to the functions in 2018 by emphasizing petrol tax in California and lost. In 2022, he ran again and won by emphasizing school problems – exploding “Woke Warriors on the left” for having badly educated local children, including “sins of our past”.
After winning, Essayli became a controversial colleague in Sacramento.
The member of the assembly Bill Essayli (R-Corona) is expressed during a press conference in Sacramento in 2023.
(Rahul LAL / CALMATTERS)
He was repeatedly removed from committees by Democratic leaders, who criticized him not to appear for sub-comity hearings and to direct personal attacks to his colleagues member of the Assembly, including on social networks.
Essayli has received attention in republican circles beyond California for a bill he presented that would have forced schools forced to inform parents of children who identify as transgender or express their interest in changing their pronouns or in the past to school.
The member of the Assembly presented the measure as a bill on “parental rights”, but the LGBTQ + defenders criticized it as a “exit” measure which would endanger children in inaccessible houses. The bill has never gained ground in Sacramento, but some school boards have introduced similar measures to the local level. Sacramento Democrats responded by facing a law prohibiting such policies on a state scale.
Trump has largely campaigned against transgender rights in the elections and has since introduced several decrees to reduce these rights, notably in schools, sports and health environments. He, like Essayli, also said that such policies are “common sense”.
Essayli accused liberal educators and legislators in California of managing a “brainwashing operation” in schools where they tell the students of kindergarten that they can “choose one of the 20 sexes”, then “wash their brains” thinking that their parents will expel them from their homes if they tell them what’s going on.
The candidate for governor John Cox, on the left, and the candidate of the assembly Bill Essayli Load Boxs of Signators for a Gas Tax Abrove Initiative on April 20, 2018. Essayli lost in his offer for his 2018 functions.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Essayli said that his “fear is that they will start to offer medical services in schools”, where state educators and other external medical care providers such as Planned Parenthood would begin to provide students as young as 12 people of hormone therapy and other medical treatments at school without knowledge or consent of their parents.
“It happens here,” said Essayli, without providing evidence.
Trump made false similar claims concerning children receiving serious medical interventions to change their sexes in school and without their parents.
On Tuesday, California legislators held an audience for a test bill that would prohibit transgender athletes from female sports. Conservative commentator Matt Walsh testified in support of the bill, which was ultimately blocked in a committee.
The writer Times Jessica Garrison contributed to this report.
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