Trump's Man in L.A.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP AND HIS WIFE, MELANIA, were standing up to leave a Pacific Palisades fire station in January of 2025 when the president’s longtime adviser Ric Grenell waved over a junior California legislator. 

“Mr. President,” Grenell told Trump. “I want you to meet….Bill Essayli.”

Essayli was a former federal prosecutor who had just begun a second term as an assemblyman from Corona; he was known less for his legislative victories than his pugnacious, camera-ready antics.

Decades younger than Trump and Grenell, he shared many of their attributes: a refusal to back down or cede any ground to opponents, an affinity for hurling bombastic, even outrageous, barbs online and off, and a preternatural ability to transform attention into power.

"He's been with you from the beginning," Grenell continued while Essayli, clad in dark slacks and a white dress shirt, folded his hands together.

Grenell, at times pointing his index finger, sketched the salient points: “He's Muslim.” “He’s a killer.” “He’s MAGA.” 

A “Palisades Strong” banner hung behind the trio and cameras kept rolling as Grenell made his objective explicit: "I want him to be U.S. Attorney." Grenell continued, "I promise you, you will be so proud of him."

Essayli retrieved a business card from his pocket and handed it to the president.

Ten weeks later, Attorney General Pam Bondi named Essayli to serve as the interim top federal prosecutor in Southern California, catapulting the tough-talking MAGA legislator into the most powerful law enforcement post this side of the Mississippi River. 

From that perch, leading the country's second-largest U.S. Attorney's office, Essayli has the authority to bring the force of the federal government against anyone in the region, with broad discretion to choose whom to investigate and charge and whom to let off. 

During the last 12 months, Essayli’s tenure has remade — and his numerous critics say, diminished — a powerful office that once took down the Sheriff of L.A. County; imprisoned the Orange County doctor who orchestrated a $1 billion health care fraud; and dismantled corruption rackets in L.A.'s City Hall and Department of Water and Power.

More than any U.S. Attorney in L.A. in recent memory, Essayli embraces partisanship, alienating the dozens of prosecutors in his office who’ve left. He often acts like a politician in other ways too: He delivers press conferences in which he blasts Gov. Gavin Newsom, and in case after case, he has used pending charges to pillory the state’s Democratic establishment.

Now, one year into his term, Essayli has said he’s turned the might of his office toward prosecuting fraud. California, Essayli told Fox News earlier this month, “has a massive fraud problem” and is “quickly becoming a failed state.” Newsom, he added, is “the fraud king.” In the first two weeks of April, Essayli posted more than 25 times on X about fraud, often calling Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta out by name. 

But despite his constant drumbeat on the topic, there is one fraud case Essayli almost never talks about: the time he partnered with the American Civil Liberties Union to help defeat a prosecution brought by the office he now leads. A prosecution that targeted several members of his own family. 

This case is little known, but it exposes a political irony for Essayli as he strives to position himself and his office as the MAGA bulwark against fraud: One of the greatest victories of his legal career was a case in which he fought the federal government on fraud charges and won.