Essayli Disqualification Order Puts Focus on First Assistant Job

Bill Essayli lost his title as acting US attorney in Los Angeles this week in a court ruling that will have almost no impact on his power in the office and provides little incentive for the Trump administration to stop circumventing the traditional appointments process, legal scholars and former prosecutors say.

The decision to disqualify Essayli is the third in a pattern of challenges to the administration’s strategy of installing loyalist top prosecutors in Democratic strongholds. All three district judges who’ve decided these cases found the officials invalidly serving as acting US attorneys. But questions remain about their authority to continue directing prosecutions after the fact.

Judge J. Michael Seabright’s order is the first to explicitly allow a disqualified leader to remain as the office’s first assistant, a title that usually belongs to a second-in-command who leads the office during a US attorney’s vacancy.

The decision follows orders prohibiting Trump’s acting US attorneys in Nevada and New Jersey—Sigal Chattah and Alina Habba—from handling criminal prosecutions in their respective offices. The judges ruled the administration unlawfully named Chattah and Habba as first assistants before naming them acting US attorneys.

Seabright’s ruling highlights the role of the judicial districts’ first assistants, who are usually career prosecutors. It also raises questions about which powers are exclusive to a US attorney, legal analysts say.

“The practical effect of the ruling is not much,” said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and criminal law professor at Loyola Law School. “It simply means that the sign on his door won’t say ‘acting’ or ‘US Attorney.’”

Essayli can still supervise prosecutions and manage the office. With a vacancy above him, judges in the Central District of California retain the ability to appoint a new US attorney. However, it’s unclear whether the decision would stick.

“For those who didn’t read the entire order, nothing is changing,” Essayli said in a Tuesday post on X, where his display name remains “Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli.”

“I continue serving as the top federal prosecutor in the Central District of California,” said Essayli.

Job Description

Seabright, the senior US District Judge for the District of Hawaii brought in to preside over the Los Angeles federal court case, said in his Tuesday order he shares concerns that “this result ‘appears to be little remedy at all.’”

The outcome is a policy consequence that can be challenged with lawmakers rather than the court, the President George W. Bush appointee said.

Seabright’s order doesn’t lay out the day-to-day responsibilities of a first assistant.

“With no US attorney, the first assistant steps in and has the most responsibility,” said Richard Drooyan, who held the role in the Central District of California in the late 1980s and again in the late 1990s. “He has the same power he had before, but just under a different title, because there’s no one above him.”

Drooyan said the position is typically “more of a free agent” who provides advice to the US attorney on major cases, guides key prosecutions, and is otherwise available for support. Without that person, Essayli can still consult criminal and civil division chiefs, Drooyan said, but they’re typically busy handling their own large teams and cases.

Essayli’s setup—serving as first assistant in name but effectively with the power of a US attorney—could deprive him of the support that someone in the top spot would usually have.

If US attorneys are “just making decisions without getting any input from anybody, I think the decision may be problematic,” Drooyan said.

Dozens of attorneys have left the office since Essayli’s tenure began in the Central District, including longtime prosecutors and division heads. The US Attorneys’ Office didn’t respond to a request for comment on Seabright’s ruling.

Federal Public Defender Cuauhtémoc Ortega—whose office brought the motion to disqualify Essayli on behalf of clients—declined to comment on the order’s impact, saying in an email his office is contemplating next litigation steps.

Court’s Option

To ensure the rulings disqualifying the acting attorneys actually hold weight, federal judges “have the power to appoint a US attorney until such time as an actual US attorney is confirmed by the Senate,” said Caren Morrison, law professor at Georgia State University and former assistant US attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

“That’s really what they need to do if they want this to mean anything more than something symbolic,” Morrison said in an interview.

Unlike the Trump administration’s acting appointments, judges “would be picking somebody based on, presumably, their qualifications and not their loyalty to the president,” Morrison said.

But Levenson is skeptical that LA district judges will exercise their discretion now, after declining to do so in July when Essayli’s interim term was set to expire.

It’s possible a court appointee would be fired by the US attorney general, which could increase problems in the district, she said.

Instead, future legal challenges may center the scope of the first assistant’s responsibility, she said.

Paul Butler, a law professor at Georgetown and former federal prosecutor, said that as the litigation over Trump’s appointments continue, the longer the White House is able to avoid putting forth a nominee.

“The Trump administration is being very aggressive at challenging this fundamental precept of separation of powers by aggressively evading the requirement of confirmation by the Senate,” Butler said.