Trump-aligned prosecutor Bill Essayli has made threats to investigate California’s primary elections for fraud, promising charges within “two months” — acting on baseless conspiracy theories spurred by MAGA-backed reality TV star Spencer Pratt failing to place in the top two of the Los Angeles mayoral race. But it’s all a “bluff,” Shirin Ali wrote for Slate on Thursday.
The conspiracy theory is summed up by President Donald Trump’s recent rant that it was “Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had.” In fact, it was entirely possible, Ali wrote, since “Republicans tend to vote in person and those ballots are counted first. Democrats tend to vote early and by mail, ballots that are counted later in the vote tallying process.”
California is also famously one of the slowest-counting states for a variety of completely normal, non-fraudulent reasons.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for his part, dismissed Essayli’s threats, saying, “Whenever I see the government, whether it’s in the voting context or otherwise, broadcasting it has an investigation, I’m immediately suspicious that this is performative.”
And in this case, Newsom is probably onto something, said Ali. “What’s really happening here is that Trump has a bone to pick with California, the most Democratic-leaning state in the country helmed by the outgoing Newsom, who is not only one of Trump’s biggest antagonists but is rumored to be a 2028 contender for president,” as well as the home state of Trump’s 2024 presidential rival, former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Essayli, who previously served in the California State Assembly, was initially appointed U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, but was disqualified from that role after a federal judge ruled, like many other Trump prosecutors, that he was illegally appointed. After that, he was reassigned to be second-in-command in that office, where he has effectively carried on the same role.
He also has a reputation for habitually failing to secure indictments, in particular fumbling a series of cases that came out of charging protesters in Los Angeles who resisted Trump’s immigration raids.
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