President Donald Trump has appointed California State Assemblyman Bill Essayli (R-Corona) as U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, elevating the “MAGA Muslim” conservative to one of the most powerful prosecutorial posts in the nation.
Essayli served as a federal prosecutor against the ISIS husband-and-wife terrorists who carried out a mass shooting at a Christmas party in San Bernardino in 2015. In 2022, he became the first Muslim elected to the state legislature.
He has been a staunch, Trump-supporting conservative, and antagonized Democrats in Sacramento by standing up to radical left-wing positions, particularly on transgender issues, where he led the Republican fight for parental rights.
Essayli also opposed Democrat policies to spend taxpayer money on illegal aliens, such as a bill to allow illegal aliens to be eligible for $150,000 in home loans for first-time buyers. He also backed a 2026 referendum to require voter ID.
In response, Democrats stripped Essayli of his position on the judiciary committee in the State Assembly, as part of a “purge” of Republican lawmakers. Now, he will have much more power over the issues that the committee oversees.
Asked by Breitbart News last year how he squared his strong support for the pro-Israel President Trump with his Muslim faith, Essayli said that he believed that only Trump could bring peace to all nations in the Middle East.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
