Los Angeles’ top federal prosecutor says California’s upcoming midterm elections face a serious threat to their integrity, warning that the process could be “corrupted.”
Bill Essayli said he believes ballots cast by noncitizens may already be in the state’s election system, as officials began processing mail-in ballots Saturday ahead of the November 3 vote.
His warning followed an extraordinary Sunday court hearing in which the Department of Justice challenged California over roughly 20,000 voters whom federal officials identify as noncitizens.
After the hearing, Essayli told The Post: “Our concern is that noncitizens are actively voting in this election and California has confirmed they will count their votes. This will corrupt the integrity of the upcoming midterm election.”
The DOJ is seeking to have the ballots separated from the count. California, however, argued that federal officials had no authority to intervene once the election process was already underway.
The three-judge panel appeared receptive to the state’s position and questioned whether it had the jurisdiction to order the ballots held aside. The judges ended Sunday’s proceedings without issuing a ruling.
“I think it’s absolutely incredible that California just walked into a room with the United States government and said these votes should be counted in the elections,” Essayli said. “They argued that whether or not they are noncitizens is irrelevant. It dilutes the votes of American voters.”
“We are committed to fighting this because even one noncitizen vote is one too many,” he added. “They seem completely disinterested in the fact they are tabulating votes from noncitizens.”
The dispute comes days after what was described as California’s largest-ever voter fraud investigation, in which 28 suspects were arrested during pre-dawn raids across the state.
The DOJ has also written to every California county, asking election officials to help identify possible noncitizen voters and giving them 48 hours to respond. On October 15, the department sued California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan.
Sunday’s hearing also intensified calls for voter identification requirements in California. Carl DeMaio, a coauthor of Proposition 39, told The Post that voters had been “lied” to about the extent of citizenship checks conducted before ballots are counted.
DeMaio said the alleged discovery of noncitizen voters reflected a “dereliction of duty” by the state.
“And now that that truth is out there, I think that the voters need to understand that the politicians will not do a proper review of citizenship. They are not doing their job,” he said. “They’re putting people in legal jeopardy. And as a result, Prop 39 is needed more than ever because, we have to force the politicians to do their job at the ballot box.”
California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton also criticized state officials, saying: “This is typical of everything that’s been going wrong in California. We’ve got a bunch of people in charge who just wont enforce the law.”
Essayli’s remarks came one day after a heated exchange on X with Gov. Gavin Newsom. Newsom dismissed the DOJ’s efforts as a desperate “clown show,” prompting Essayli to respond: “Hey Fraud King. We’re not waiting for them to vote. You’re not allowed to have any noncitizens on your voter rolls. ‘Period. Full stop.’”
The Sunday hearing took place before a three-judge federal appeals panel, including two judges appointed by President Trump. The panel sharply questioned the Justice Department over its request to set aside the approximately 20,000 ballots.
“It seems to me that you want us to issue an injunction that is entirely inconsistent with the law,” Judge Mark Bennett, a Trump appointee, told Justice Department attorney Matthew Donnelly. “How can we do that?”
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Two of the three Ninth Circuit judges suggested that the appeals court might not have the power to intervene, particularly because a lower-court judge had already scheduled a hearing for Tuesday.
The panel had not ruled by Sunday afternoon but said it would act “as quickly as possible.” If the appeal is rejected, the dispute will return Tuesday to US District Judge David O. Carter in Santa Ana.
“Once a mail-in vote is processed, it cannot be unprocessed, and the damage is irreversible and irreparable,” Donnelly argued. He noted that Los Angeles County estimated it had already processed more than 500,000 ballots.
Judge Gabriel Sanchez, a Biden appointee, questioned the DOJ about the unnamed “third party analytics” used to assemble the list of roughly 20,000 suspected noncitizen voters.
Donnelly pointed to sworn declarations from two Department of Homeland Security employees vouching for the process.
Sanchez also asked why a July letter from DHS to Weber had cited about 190,000 potentially problematic registrants. “So what changed in the intervening months to go from 190,000 to 20,000?” he asked.
Donnelly said the drop came from DHS’s vetting process. He said the July figure came from a list that had not yet been through that review, because DOJ was hoping California would cooperate.
Sanchez, who appeared skeptical of the appeal, noted that ballot envelopes carry only a name, address and signature, not identifying details such as Social Security numbers.
“My name is Gabriel Sanchez. I guarantee you there are many Gabriel Sanchezes in the county of Los Angeles,” he said, questioning how officials could reliably match names to ballots.
“The United States executive is unhappy with what [California] is doing and doesn’t like the manner in which they have determined how they’re going to conduct the election,” Bennett said.
“But it seems to me that under the Elections Clause, they have the right to determine the manner of the elections, including sorting out noncitizens.”
“How can we, a federal court, do what is reserved to Congress, which Congress, in my view, hasn’t done?” Bennett asked.
The third judge, Trump appointee Patrick Bumatay, appeared more sympathetic to the DOJ, pressing California on whether it could identify noncitizen voters.
He said: “Without an injunction, you will never know, correct? Because if the ballots are cast and separated, then they’re going to be tabulated, and there’s no way of knowing.”
Sam Siegel, arguing for California, replied: “Your Honor, we would respectfully disagree with that because of the number of steps that people have to take to attest to their citizenship, to declare consistent with what is required by both federal and state law that they are citizens when they register to vote.”
He said it is California’s stance that “if the Executive Branch wants that authority in the first instance, they need to go ask Congress for it, they haven’t done that.”
He added: “They ask this court to short circuit the democratic process and issue an order, not just on the eve of an election, but as an election is underway.”
