A US judge ruled on Tuesday that Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in southern California, was “unlawfully serving” as the head of the US attorney’s office and was disqualified from overseeing two criminal prosecutions.
The order, however, will not immediately go into effect, and the Department of Justice has said it intends to appeal.
The ruling was part of a long-running legal battle challenging the Trump administration’s maneuvers to keep Essayli in office despite not being confirmed by the US Senate. Essayli, a former Republican state lawmaker and ally of Donald Trump, became an interim US attorney in April 2025, but he was not formally nominated by the president, which allowed him to lead the office without going through the standard confirmation process.
Sounds like every case this dude tries gets to have a free appeal. Which is fine with the DOJ because abuse of the system until it breaks is the whole point.
“The order, however, will not immediately go into effect” sounds pretty useless to me and enables the DOJ to tie folks up in legal fees and processes as intended. Watching judges allow the GOP to destroy our country through a pattern of abusing the legal system has been interesting.
