A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that Bill Essayli, the man running the United States Attorney's Office for the Central District of California, is holding the job unlawfully, and barred him from taking part in or supervising two criminal prosecutions. Senior U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright concluded that the Justice Department had given Essayli so much of a U.S. attorney's power under other titles — "special attorney" and "first assistant" — that he is in reality the district's top prosecutor without ever having been nominated by the President or confirmed by the Senate. "In sum, Essayli is unlawfully serving as a 'de facto' United States Attorney," the judge wrote. The judge refused to throw out the indictments in the two cases, and his order is stayed while the government appeals.
The legal problem, as Seabright laid it out, is that there are only a few lawful roads into that job, and the department took none of them. A United States attorney is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. When a seat falls vacant, the Attorney General may name an interim U.S. attorney for no more than 120 days; after that, the choice passes to the judges of the district until a nominee is confirmed. A separate federal vacancies law lets a first assistant step up automatically — but only a first assistant who was already sitting in that chair when the vacancy opened. In August, the Ninth Circuit, deciding the Nevada case of Sigal Chattah in United States v. Jackson, held that the vacancies law is the exclusive route for filling such a post temporarily, and that the Attorney General cannot instead hand an unconfirmed official all of a U.S. attorney's powers by delegation. Seabright found Essayli's arrangement nearly identical to Chattah's. The department's last attempted fix — a September 23 order that formally withheld three powers reserved to a confirmed U.S. attorney — changed nothing, he wrote: "Withholding the three specific statutory powers mentioned in the revised designation order in reality withholds nothing." At an October 13 hearing he had put it more bluntly, after noting that the three powers could not legally have been delegated anyway: "This is saying that you can do everything but what you can't legally do."
Essayli, a former Republican member of the California State Assembly from Riverside, was sworn in as interim U.S. attorney on April 2, 2025, appointed by Attorney General Pam Bondi. He was never nominated by the President, so the 120-day clock was the whole of his lawful tenure. As it ran out, he resigned from the interim post on July 29, 2025, and the department immediately designated him a special attorney and first assistant, keeping him at the head of the office — the largest federal judicial district in the country, covering seven counties and some 20 million people. Seabright struck at the arrangement once already, ruling on October 28, 2025, that Essayli had unlawfully served as acting U.S. attorney since July — but that order let him keep supervising prosecutions in his other roles. It was the Ninth Circuit's Jackson decision this August that destroyed the ground under that compromise, and defence lawyers renewed their challenge within days.
Tuesday's order lands in the two prosecutions whose lawyers challenged him. Jaime Hector Ramirez is charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition. Tu Anh Tran is charged with possessing property stolen from an interstate or foreign shipment. Defence attorney H. Dean Steward, who brought the renewed challenge, called the ruling "a victory for the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution." But Seabright refused the defendants' request to dismiss their indictments, finding they had not shown the substantial prejudice that remedy requires: the charges were brought by prosecutors lawfully in their posts, and the two cases go on without Essayli's hand in them once the order takes effect.
Essayli answered that his office had expected the outcome. "We respectfully disagree with the court's order," he said in a statement. "The President and the Attorney General have every right to select supervisors within the Justice Department. Importantly, today's order is automatically stayed so the government can seek a full stay and maintain the status quo pending our appeal." The question, he said, "will be decided by the Supreme Court," and he looked forward to serving in his current role until then. The Justice Department says it will appeal, and it has already asked the Supreme Court to review the Ninth Circuit's Nevada ruling, arguing the appeals court was wrong to stop a prosecutor from supervising cases with authority delegated by the Attorney General. Under the timetable Seabright accepted, the government has five business days to ask him for a full stay; if he refuses, the bar on Essayli begins a week later unless the Ninth Circuit steps in.
Los Angeles is the latest front in a national fight over how these offices may be filled. In Nevada, Sigal Chattah was disqualified under the same reasoning, upheld by the Ninth Circuit in August. In New Jersey, Alina Habba stepped aside in December after appellate judges ruled her appointment invalid. In Virginia, a court found Lindsey Halligan had been improperly installed, and the charges she brought against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James were thrown out as a result. Seabright also noted a fact that frames the whole dispute: to this day, the President has not nominated anyone for the Los Angeles post.
For ordinary people, this is not a quarrel about titles. Senate confirmation is the public's one handle on the officials who decide who gets indicted, whose home is searched and which cases are never brought. When a prosecutor holds power the law never gave him, every case he touches carries a question mark: defendants in the Central District, guilty and innocent alike, can spend years litigating not what they did but who accused them, and victims can watch sound prosecutions wobble for reasons that have nothing to do with the evidence. Enforcing the appointment rules is what keeps prosecutions — and convictions — standing.
What happens next is not settled. Whether Seabright or the Ninth Circuit will keep the order frozen during the appeal, whether defendants in other cases Essayli has supervised will now file challenges of their own, whether the district's judges will use their own power to appoint a U.S. attorney, and whether the White House will finally send the Senate a nominee — none of that is known. For now, Essayli remains at his desk, and the fight over whether he may lawfully sit there moves up the courts.
📰 ProfiloPolitics Member News — choose your news, share it, earn credit
Members choose the news they want — share it and earn credit.
📣 Join ProfiloPolitics on Telegram — breaking news first
Follow @profilopoliticsnews for every update on this story.