Trump appoints Assemblyman Bill Essayli as next U.S. attorney for Central District of California

President Donald Trump has chosen firebrand Republican Assemblyman Bill Essayli, R-Corona, to be the next U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, according to a multiple news reports.

Politico first posted the story on Tuesday night. Attempts to reach Essayli or his staff on Tuesday were unsuccessful.

Essayli, 39, is a former Riverside County deputy district attorney and assistant U.S. attorney in the Central District. In that role, he prosecuted accessories to the 2015 Islamic terror attack at a government building in San Bernardino in which 14 people were killed. A graduate of Chapman University School of Law, he also maintains an estate planning law firm, Essayli & Brown LLP, in Irvine.

In 2022, he became the first Muslim elected to the California Assembly.

With the appointment, Essayli jumps from being an outspoken but powerless minority member of the Assembly to running the largest U.S. attorney's office in the nation. Some of his Democratic colleagues might welcome the change. He frequently engaged in verbal confrontations with Democratic members. Essayli was the only lawmaker of either party who did not have a single bill signed into law during the 2023-2024 legislative session.

Last year, he got in a shouting match on the Assembly floor with Assemblymember Corey Jackson, D-Moreno Valley, over AB 1955--a bill that banned so-called forced outing policies that required schools to tell parents when a child changed their gender identity. On Tuesday, Essayli's bill to demand sex segregated school sports, AB 844, failed during a contentious Assembly Committee hearing.

The change could also put the Los Angeles region under two up-and-coming conservative prosecutors. Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan Hochman unseated controversial progressive Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon in the November election.