The Department of Justice isn’t backing down. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli is pushing hard on multiple fronts — investigating what he calls voter fraud in California and fighting the state in federal court over access to voter registration data. In a recent interview on California Politics 360, Essayli made clear his office has concrete evidence of wrongdoing and expects criminal charges soon.
The centerpiece of this battle is an audit. Essayli’s team, led by Harmy Dillon in the civil rights section, has been trying for the better part of the last year to examine California’s statewide voter rolls. Federal law requires states to verify that only citizens are registered to vote under the Help America Vote Act and the Voting Rights Act. California’s Secretary of State Shirley Weber and the state’s Attorney General have refused, citing privacy concerns. The case is now at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, still unresolved.
Essayli points to concrete examples of what he sees as systemic problems. Last month, his office charged an individual for paying homeless people to register to vote with fictitious information. The Department of Motor Vehicles admitted years ago that it accidentally registered roughly 20,000 to 30,000 non-citizens to vote. There are also circulating videos from Los Angeles’s Skid Row showing unhoused individuals claiming they were paid to vote for Karen Bass for mayor — something Essayli said his office is examining.
Beyond the investigations, Essayli outlines what he views as structural vulnerabilities in California’s election system: universal mail-in voting to everyone on the rolls whether they want a ballot or not, unregulated ballot harvesting with no chain of custody, and no voter ID requirement. He frames these not necessarily as fraud in the legal sense, but as practices that breed suspicion and lack the transparency voters deserve.
The state’s resistance to an audit is the sticking point. Essayli pushes back against the privacy argument, asking why California wouldn’t want to reassure the public that nothing nefarious is happening. His office says they’re following the evidence wherever it leads — and they believe charges are coming. Whether the court agrees that the feds have the authority to demand those voter rolls remains to be decided by the Ninth Circuit.
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Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson is a contributor to LocalBeat, covering local news and community stories.
