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Bill Essayli Has an Identity Crisis

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First Assistant AUSA Bill Essayli, who continues to serve most functions of US Attorney in Los Angeles even after Judge Michael Seabright ruled he’s not lawfully the US Attorney, has an identity crisis.

And it’s not his continued attempts to use textual gimmicks to obscure that he’s not the US Attorney, as the way he adds the initials “F.A.” in his Xitter profile as if his given name is “Fucking Asshole.”

Though the defendant who first forced a ruling that Essayli was playacting, Jaime Hector Rodriguez, continues to insist that Essayli can’t just change his title in a bid to keep powers he does not lawfully possess.

The simple answer is that Mr. Essayli is exercising power he does not possess. He has transcended the land of statutes. He is wielding significant authority, but the whole point is that he lacks that authority: it was not validly conferred on him by Congress. No powers are conferred on “a FAUSA” by statute, id., because the FAUSA position is absent from the statutes, R.M. 9–10. But this FAUSA has inferior-officer powers, because he is exercising powers he has never been conferred. E.g., R.M. 9 & n.2. This is just another way for the government to cast the trick it has played in benign language: appoint an ineligible individual to a vacant office, give him a different title not set out in the statutes, and thereby avoid all statutory limits on the appointment.

Lindsey Halligan’s similar identity problem in EDVA is heating up too.

Rather, I’m talking about the identity issues that threaten to destroy his efforts to criminalize doxing in the immigration context.

In US v. Raygoza, Essayli charged three women who followed an ICE officer — believing he was headed to conduct another snatching — only to arrive at his home. They continued to livestream, and from a neighbor’s property, they both invited others to come to the neighborhood but also announced to his neighbors that he’s la migra.

Yesterday, Fucking Asshole Bill Essayli responded to Sandra Samane’s and Ashleigh Brown’s motions to dismiss (Brown is represented by the same FPDs who made a frivolous assault charge against her go away last year). It’s not so much that their arguments were rock solid; motions to dismiss are really difficult to win. Rather, it’s that in the course of two footnotes, Fucking Asshole Bill Essayli revealed grave problems with his case. The second explained why a separate motion moved to dismiss the second count of the indictment, doxing, the crime which the defendants allegedly conspired to commit.

4 Defendants failed to state the actual home address of R.H. on social media, and instead said the number of a neighbor’s home approximately 100 feet from that of R.H. Because 18 U.S.C. § 119 criminalizes making publicly available “the home address” of covered individuals, the government has moved to dismiss the substantive count (Count Two).

The definition of restricted personal information as used in the law pertains only to the alleged victims own address; the defendants here livestreamed his neighbor’s address (in detention filings in her now-dismissed assault case, Brown explained that they stayed some distance from the victim’s house so as to comply with her release conditions).

A still graver problem for Fucking Asshole Bill Essayli is that — in a filing that elsewhere focuses closely on the terms specifically defined in the doxing statute (“restricted information” and “covered persons”) and on the import of the definitions generally (which is normal in responding to a void for vagueness challenge), Fucking Asshole Bill Essayli uses his first footnote to offer a definition of doxing.

1 Doxxing is short for “dropping documents.” Vangheluwe v. Got News, LLC, 365 F. Supp. 3d 850, 858 (E.D. Mich. 2019). The practice involves “using the Internet to source out and collect someone’s personal and private information and then publicly releasing that information online.” Id. The “goal of doxxing is typically retribution, harassment or humiliation.” Id.

He’s got two problems with that footnote.

First, what the defendants did — follow a guy home unwittingly and livestream where they ended up — is entirely different from “using the Internet to source out and collect someone’s personal and private information,” which only underscores that no one alleges that the defendants specifically sought out the ICE guy’s address. They didn’t dox him, according to the definition in this footnote.

Worse still, the defined goal of doxing in that footnote — “retribution, harrassment[,] or humiliation” — differs from the intent requirement in the statute:

(a) In General.—Whoever knowingly makes restricted personal information about a covered person, or a member of the immediate family of that covered person, publicly available—

(1) with the intent to threaten, intimidate, or incite the commission of a crime of violence against that covered person, or a member of the immediate family of that covered person; or

(2) with the intent and knowledge that the restricted personal information will be used to threaten, intimidate, or facilitate the commission of a crime of violence against that covered person, or a member of the immediate family of that covered person,

The defendants may have doxed the ICE goon. They may well have decided to humiliate him in front of his neighbors by revealing that he is an ICE goon.

But there’s a chasm between hoping to humiliate someone who does a disfavored job and intending for someone to use that information to commit a crime of violence against them. Fucking Asshole Bill Essayli attempts to dodge that by saying the conspiracy should not incorporate the elements of the count he’s seeking to admit and also stating that they won’t argue the defendants intended a crime of violence to happen to the ICE guy.

Separately, Brown argues the indictment must be dismissed because it does not specify the “crime of violence” Brown allegedly intended to incite. (Brown Mot. 19-21.) Even assuming this argument is applicable to the conspiracy alleged in Count One and not just the substantive count the government has moved to dismiss, at trial the government does not intend to proceed on the theory that defendants conspired to release R.H.’s home address with the intent to incite the commission of a crime of violence against him, or did so with the intent and knowledge that the restricted information would be used to facilitate the commission of a crime of violence against him. Defendant’s argument with respect to this portion of the statute is thus moot.

But he never gets around to addressing the larger point. Humiliation is not a crime of violence. But it is also not a threat or even intimidation.

The problem with this is made more apparent when Fucking Asshole Bill Essayli engages in a hypothetical dismissing Brown’s attempt to say she couldn’t have doxed the victim, because his address was already public. Brown’s tack would lead to absurd results, Fucking Asshole Bill Essayli says, because if it held, then how would they criminalize someone threatening the daughter of a judge (like Trump’s doxing of Barack Obama, something Trump has done), and how would they criminalize a defendant posting a witness’ address with the intent they they be intimidated by the criminal’s mob (again, something Trump has done more than once or twice or a hundred times).

And to interpret the statute as Brown would have it would lead to absurd results. Take, for example, the hypothetical of a judge’s daughter posting a photograph on Instagram that reveals her home address: a photograph of her family standing outside her home where the mailbox is visible. A defendant who later appears before the judge would not be subject to prosecution for posting the judge’s home address on an online forum with the intent to threaten the judge due to the daughter’s prior Instagram post. Similarly, a juror, informant, or witness would be cut off from statutory protection if a defendant’s family member or gang associate followed her home and posted the address on Facebook to intimidate her, but her address was already listed in the Whitepages.

In both those cases, of course, a prosecutor could — and should have, in the case of serial criminal Donald Trump — charged that as obstruction, witness tampering.

But these hypotheticals only underscore the point: in a filing asserting that doxing is done for humiliation, Fucking Asshole Bill Essayli is dodging language that requires further intent, not just to humiliate a goon in front of his neighbors, but to threaten him.

Threatening someone with social opprobrium is not the same as threatening someone with physical violence.

Yet the former is what Fucking Asshole Bill Essayli attempts to criminalize here.

Fucking Asshole Bill Essayli wants to criminalize any effort to shame someone for doing a shameful job. And while the argument may well get beyond this effort to dismiss the indictment, he has confessed in this filing that these women didn’t commit the charged crime.

Bill Essayli Moves to Dismiss Key “Assault” Case before DOJ Has to Explain What It Knew

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The high profile politicized prosecutions — of Jim Comey, Tish James, and John Bolton (and of LaMonica McIver if the press weren’t broken) — are really important tests of Trump’s attempt to turn DOJ into a weapon.

But the relatively anonymous cases — as often as not, defended by Federal Public Defenders — are just important a vindication of rule of law.

Today’s important victory goes to Ashleigh Brown. She was charged in conjunction with a confrontation with Federal Protective Services (not, NOT ICE or CBP) outside Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles on August 2.

c. Approximately three [Federal Protective Services] Officers, including FPS Officer Z.C., walked out to remove REDONDO-ROSALES from the path of the government car. As the group of FPS officers approached REDONDO-ROSALES, he moved backwards away from the FPS officers in an apparent attempt to avoid being apprehended. Then, FPS Officer Z.C. approached REDONDO-ROSALES in an effort to detain him, and REDONDO-ROSALES intentionally struck Officer Z.C. in the face with his left hand (at the time, REDONDO-ROSALES had a tan, wide-brimmed hat in his left hand).

d. After FPS officers were able to detain REDONDORO-SALES, Officer Z.C. and approximately four other FPS officers began to escort REDONDO-ROSALES towards the Alameda Street Entrance.

e. As Officer Z.C. walked a few feet in front of the two FPS officers who were escorting REDONDO-ROSALES toward the Alameda Street Entrance, BROWN approached Officer Z.C. and stepped into Officer Z.C.’s path. Officer Z.C. continued past BROWN toward the Alameda Street Entrance, but as he did so, BROWN intentionally hit Officer Z.C. in his left side with her right arm.

The felony charge against Brown was reportedly no-billed by a jury. For whatever reason, Bill Essayli charged her with misdemeanor interference instead, only to succeed in getting her detained after she allegedly violated bail by following an ICE officer home, for which she and two others were charged with conspiracy to dox him.

Though in Brown’s response to a 404(b) notice attempting to present the doxing case to the “assault” jury, her lawyers claimed that, “R.H. got into his personal vehicle and drove to where Ms. Brown was parked. He stopped his vehicle in the driveway, blocking Ms. Brown’s vehicle from leaving.” That is, even on the case that did get indicted, the cop in question arguably instigated the confrontation.

There were a number of things that would have been interesting if this had gone to trial, including Brown’s sealed filings about why she had a claim of self defense, as well as her success, after submitting them, in getting an order to share DHS’ Use of Force guidelines.

But things got interesting today when Brown submitted a motion to disqualify the victim in this case, ZC, from testifying based on DOJ’s failure to tell the defense that he had a (misdemeanor) criminal record, most notably a conviction in a harassment involving physical contact charge just four years ago.

C. Defense Discovers Z.C.’s Criminal History

On October 23, 2025, while preparing for trial in this matter, defense counsel learned that Z.C. has criminal history that includes at least:

  • Harassment – subjecting a person to physical contact, in violation of Pennsylvania Statute § 18.2709(a)(1), convicted on June 17, 2021;
  • Disorderly conduct, in violation of Florida Statute § 509.143, arrested on August 31, 2014; and
  • Driving under the influence, in violation of Florida Statute § 316193(1), convicted on November 4, 2013.

Exhibits H, I, filed under seal.

These records were obtained through independent defense investigation. Of note, the defense does not have access to law enforcement databases and thus cannot confirm whether this is Z.C.’s complete criminal history or whether there is additional relevant information about these or any other arrests or convictions.

D. Defense Contacts the USAO With Its Findings. The USAO States It Was Not Aware of Z.C.’s Assault History.

On October 26, 2025, after further research and internal discussion, defense counsel contacted government counsel regarding its findings. Government counsel requested a few hours to investigate and respond. Later that evening, the parties conferred by telephone. Government counsel indicated that it was not previously aware of Z.C.’s 2021 conviction for assault. The government had asked Z.C. about his prior convictions in interviews. The government was only aware of Z.C.’s 2014 arrest for disorderly conduct and his 2013 conviction for driving under the influence. In addition, government counsel stated that it had not conducted an independent Henthorn review of Z.C., but had relied on the word and responsiveness of another agency (FPS) to conduct a Henthorn review of Z.C.’s personnel file.

The judge in the case, Obama appointee Fernando Olguin, was not only interested in learning more about DOJ’s failure to disclose this detail, but also who, if anyone, knew about ZC’s criminal history, and if so, why they didn’t disclose it.

Having reviewed and considered all the briefing filed with respect to defendant’s Motion to Compel Production of Complete Personnel Files and Motion in Limine to Exclude Testimony of Z.C., (Dkt. 83, “Motion”), the court concludes that it would benefit from full briefing on the issues presented in the Motion. Accordingly, IT IS ORDERED THAT:

1. The government shall file its papers in opposition to the Motion by no later than Tuesday, October 28, 2025 at 5:00 p.m.

2. Together with its opposition, the government must submit a declaration signed by counsel for the government that sets forth the names and titles of the individuals who conducted the Henthorn and/or Brady reviews of the relevant personnel file materials, and the dates on which such reviews were conducted. Counsel for the government is cautioned that failure to provide such a declaration may lead to the imposition of sanctions, including but not limited to the exclusion of evidence and/or witnesses.

Normally, when DOJ has decided they have to abandon false assault charges, they attempt to dismiss without prejudice.

Not so here. They’re filing to dismiss with prejudice.

The United States moves to dismiss its information with prejudice against defendant in the interests of justice under Federal Criminal Rule 48(a), and therefore respectfully requests that the Court grant its motion. Defendant does not oppose dismissal and the parties agree all pending motions should be denied as moot.

Brown’s legal troubles are not done. The doxing case is a felony, and as a conspiracy case, DOJ has broader leeway for introducing evidence against Brown. She remains detained (based on her prior violation of bail) in that case.

But DOJ has been attempting to link these two cases, presumably as a way to salvage the initial assault case.

And even that tactic could now backfire.

US v Brown (assault) docket

US v. Raygoza (conspiracy to dox) docket