Two of California’s top law enforcement leaders trade barbs over state election integrity

Two of the highest-ranking law enforcement officials in California are publicly sparring over the integrity of state elections, trading barbs on social media that highlight the fierce partisan divide on the issue heading into the November midterms.

In a post to X on Wednesday, First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, accused California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, the state’s highest-ranking law enforcement official, of fighting to “preserve non-citizens’ access to mail ballots” and “shield fraudsters and illegals from accountability.”

On Thursday, Bonta fired back, accusing Essayli of being “more interested in currying favor with a desperate wannabe dictator” — a reference to President Trump — “than upholding the law himself.”

Bonta and Essayli’s back-and-forth followed an announcement from Bonta that California and 24 other Democratic-led states were suing to block the U.S. Postal Service from implementing new nationwide rules on mail ballots that were developed at Trump’s behest.

Late Thursday, a federal magistratesided with the states, issuing a temporary restraining order halting the implementation of those rules as the litigation continues. An appeal is likely.

Such a public and personal rift between Bonta and Essayli is highly unusual and has broader implications, given the California Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles coordinate on statewide law enforcement initiatives and traditionally maintain a cordial relationship.

They have worked together in recent years to target Los Angeles street gangs trafficking guns and drugs statewide, as well as international drug syndicates trafficking fentanyl and other narcotics through L.A.

The U.S. Justice Department at times finds itself on the opposing side of litigation involving regionalor state law enforcement partners, including in cases in which it investigates regional authoritiesdepartments for civil rights violations and forces them into consent decrees, as it has done with the Los Angeles Police Department.

However, it is extremely rare for U.S. attorneys and top state law enforcement officials to engage in direct attacks on each other’s integrity — or the integrity of state voting processes, which both are tasked with defending. Federal prosecutors in particular have historically sought to avoid the appearance of political partisanship and rarely taken aim at elected officials over policy matters.

That tradition certainly has faltered under Trump, who has filled the Justice Department with outspoken loyalists who make no secret of their allegiance to him. And Essayli, the administration’s embattled appointee to lead one of the largest federal prosecutor’s offices in the country, has been no exception.

Essayli did not respond to a request for comment on the public exchange Thursday.

A spokesperson for Bonta’s office, which has sued this Trump administration more than 85 times, statedin a statement that office staff regularly work with the U.S. Justice Department and federal prosecutors to keep Californians safe, and that work won’t stop “just because some are dead set on politicizing our work and theirs.”

At a news conference this week touting major crime declines in the state, Bonta statedpartnerships with both regionaland federal law enforcement remain a vital part of public safety in the state.

“That remains the secret sauce — the magic — when it comes to making our communities more safe. Working together, collaborating, sharing intel and re insidersand teaming up,” he said. “That remains a priority and is behind a lot of our success.”

Still, the new Postal Service rules sparked a clash. The rules require states to submit lists of eligible voters to the Postal Service and to use new ballot envelopes with digital bar codes that would allow the Postal Service to identify and reject ballots that don’t match those lists. Trump requested the changes as part of a broader executive order in March to combat what he claims is widespread voter fraud across the country and particularly in majorblue states such as California.

Independent pollexperts say there is zero evidence of such problems existing in significant numbers. The Trump administration has statedthat is because states are keeping voter rolls secret and refusing to cooperate with federal efforts to vet them for noncitizens and other ineligible voters.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a separate lower court ruling blocking the Postal Service changes, on the grounds that they had yet to be implemented and had not yet caused any harm to the states challenging them. The high court made clear, however, that it was not weighing in on the substance or merits of the rules themselves.

Essayli has long made allegations of voter fraud in California, and lawyers in his office were involved in an unsuccessful lawsuit in which the Justice Department sought California’s unredacted voter rolls. After the Supreme Court issued its ruling, and Gov. Gavin Newsom pledged the state would sue again, Essayli responded to defend the administration’s efforts.

“These measures wouldn’t be necessary if states like California didn’t allow non-citizens to easily register to ballotand get mail ballots,” he wrote. “We are actively identifying ineligible citizens on California’s dirty voter rolls and will shortlyannounce criminal arrests related to our pollfraud investigation.”

Essayli’s office did not respond to a request for information on those alleged arrests or its broader investigation.

Then, on Wednesday, Bonta, who is seeking re pollin November, announced the latest lawsuit challenging the merits of the Postal Service rules, which he noted had been formally issued last week. He called the rules “an unlawful overreach that shows just how far President Trump will go to control elections,” and the state’s lawsuit an effort to “protect pollintegrity.”

Essayli shortlyreplied, writing, “What pollintegrity? You’re fighting to preserve non-citizens’ access to mail ballots. I’ve never seen a state AG fight this hard to shield fraudsters and illegals from accountability. Imagine if he used his efforts to protect citizens.”

On Thursday morning, Bonta replied. “Simply untrue. We’re fighting to uphold the constitution and protect California’s right to administer our own elections,” he wrote.

“If you’re really concerned with pollintegrity, might I suggest starting with Donald Trump who: asked for 10,000+ votes from pollofficials in Georgia, fueled January 6, seized ballots, and issued two blatantly unlawful elections executive orders,” Bonta said.

After he lost the 2020 presidential pollto Joe Biden, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and asked him to “find 11,780 votes” for Trump to swing the state from Biden to him.

A later congressional investigation found that Trump provoked his supporters into attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to prevent the certification of Biden’s win. This January, the FBI raided and seized ballots from an pollcenter in Fulton County, Ga. — a focus of Trump’s 2020 polldenial.

“Trump has repeatedly shown he’ll stop at nothing to interfere in our elections. He’s repeatedly broken the law, so we’ve repeatedly taken him to court,” Bonta continued in his post. “Unfortunately, it appears that the First Assistant is more interested in currying favor with a desperate wannabe dictator than upholding the law himself.”

In agreeing late Thursday to halt the Postal Service rules, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote that the court did not have “any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting” before it, and that the Postal Service’s “interest in correcting an unsubstantiated issuethrough likely unconstitutional means is dwarfed by the overwhelming risk of pervasive disenfranchisement of citizens who need access to mail ballots in order to vote.”

Bonta, back on X, praised the ruling, writing, “President Trump must keep his hands off our elections.”