Left: President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Republican governors at Mar-a-Lago, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci). Right: U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, at podium with Akil Davis is the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI”s Los Angeles Field Office, left, answer questions during a news conference in Los Angeles, Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes).
A week after the DOJ pushed back against criminal defendants seeking the disqualification of yet another Trump administration acting U.S. attorney, challengers have asked a federal judge to find that Bilal “Bill” Essayli cannot be the top prosecutor for the Central District of California, especially not after his “absurd,” “bizarre,” and even puzzling arguments.
The Friday filing on behalf of criminal defendants Ismael Garcia, Jr., and Jaime Hector Ramirez began by calling the DOJ’s opposition to Essayli’s disqualification “a handbook for circumventing the protections that the Constitution and Congress built against the limitless, unaccountable handpicking of temporary officials” by President Donald Trump and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who have multiple times filled U.S. attorneys’ offices with temporary heads while ensuring that first assistant — that is, second in command — positions are vacant.
“Under the government’s interpretation of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, whenever agency heads want to fill a position requiring Senate confirmation, they can simply fire the first assistant and backfill with anyone they choose. That choice automatically gets the top job,” court documents said, noting that Bondi has also granted such appointees additional supervisory authority over the U.S. attorneys’ office, whether or not they are validly serving in the role of top prosecutor.
The result of the maneuvers, if accepted, is that presidents current and future can simply install “never-confirmed, FVRA-ineligible shadow officials” with “no limits or eligibility requirements” and “indefinitely,” Garcia and Ramirez’s attorneys argued. That’s a “loophole” one federal judge has already rejected in former Trump personal attorney Alina Habba’s case and it’s one that Senior U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright, a George W. Bush appointee, should likewise slap down, the defendants said.
“The government’s interpretation ‘opens a gaping loophole’ that ‘flies in the face of the goal that Congress was trying to accomplish,'” said the filing in support of Essayli’s disqualification and dismissals of the indictments. “The Court should reject that loophole, just as it should reject the government’s other thinly sourced arguments.”
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From here, the criminal defendants tore into DOJ’s “bizarre,” “absurd,” and puzzling attempt to kick their challenges out of court for lack of “civil” standing, even as the government “largely ignore[d]” and barely mentioned — “except in a throwaway footnote saying it ‘was incorrect'” — the reasoning behind the invalidation of Habba’s authority.
“In addition to violating the FVRA, Mr. Essayli’s service is unlawful under the 120-day clock at 28 U.S.C. § 546(c)(2) and the Appointments Clause. Mr. Garcia and Mr. Ramirez can challenge their criminal prosecution by an unauthorized official—notwithstanding the government’s bizarre citations to cases about plaintiffs‘ standing in civil cases—and they are entitled to adequate remedies,” court documents continued, adding later on the same issue:
The government puzzlingly argues defendants must establish civil standing in order move to dismiss their criminal case or disqualify a prosecutor. Tellingly, it found no criminal cases to support that idea. And although the government concedes that standing rules apply to “a plaintiff,” it never acknowledges the government is the plaintiff here. Even in civil cases, the proposition is absurd: a defendant does not need standing to move to dismiss a complaint. His “standing” is the fact he was dragged into court in the first place.
Given all of the foregoing, Garcia and Ramirez assert that, at minimum, Essayli and those prosecutors under his supervision should be disqualified from the prosecutions in the district and that, at most, the indictments should be thrown out “with prejudice,” so the charges can’t be brought again.
The filing comes as defendants in New Jersey attempt to uphold Habba’s disqualification on appeal and as Nevada defendants continue to push for Sigal Chattah’s invalidation. The Trump administration has repeatedly used acting appointments of U.S. attorneys to sidestep the U.S. Senate’s advice and consent role in confirming nominees to the permanent position.
The most recent iteration of prosecutorial musical chairs took place in the Eastern District of Virginia, where court-appointed U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert was forced out by the president and replaced with another former Trump personal attorney, Lindsey Halligan, who used her acting authority to immediately move forward with an indictment of ex-FBI Director James Comey — a series of events that at least one conservative legal commentator believes was unlawful, leaving aside questions about the strength of the charges themselves.
