LA’s top federal prosecutor scorches California after noncitizen voters battle

Los Angeles’ top federal prosecutor has warned the upcoming midterm elections are under serious risk of being “corrupted” in California.

Bill Essayli said he was concerned noncitizen votes were already being counted across the state, with the processing of mail-in ballots having started on Saturday ahead of the November 3 elections.

He made the claim after an extraordinary court hearing Sunday where the Department of Justice faced off with California over 20,000 voters who the federal government claims are noncitizens.

Speaking after the court adjourned on Sunday, 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 has demanded the state set these votes aside while California officials claimed the federal government had no right to make such an intervention when the election was already underway.

The three judges in the case appeared sympathetic toward the state’s argument, with them unsure whether they had the jurisdiction to force the ballots to be put aside — but they adjourned without a ruling as of Sunday afternoon.

“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. They seem completely disinterested in the fact they are tabulating votes from noncitizens,” he added

It comes after the biggest ever voter fraud bust in Californian history last week, with a network of 28 suspects arrested in pre-dawn raids across the state.

Meanwhile the DOJ sent letters to every county in the state requesting local election officials to help identify any noncitizen voters and gave them 48 hours to comply. It also sued California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan on Oct. 15.

The hearing renewed calls for voter ID in California’s elections, with Prop 39 coauthor Carl DeMaio telling The Post that voters have been “lied” to about the current levels of citizenship verification before ballots are counted.

DeMaio told The Post the noncitizen voters discovery shows the state has shown a “dereliction of duty.”
“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 weighed in: “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 comments came just a day after a tense back and forth on X with Gov. Gavin Newsom, who blasted the DOJ’s attempts as a desperate “clown show” — but the top federal prosecutor quipped back: “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 afternoon hearing was held before a three-judge federal appeals panel, including two Trump-appointed judges, that grilled the Justice Department over its bid to have the 20,000 votes set aside.

“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?”

During the hearing, two of the three Ninth Circuit judges suggested the court may lack the authority to intervene because a lower-court judge has a hearing scheduled for Tuesday.

As of Sunday afternoon the panel had not ruled but said it would decide the matter “as quickly as possible.” If it dismisses the appeal, the case will return to US District Judge David O. Carter in Santa Ana on Tuesday.

“Once a mail-in vote is processed, it cannot be unprocessed, and the damage is irreversible and irreparable,” Donnelly said, noting Los Angeles County had estimated it processed more than 500,000 ballots.

Judge Gabriel Sanchez, a Biden appointee, pressed the DOJ on unnamed “third party analytics” used to compile the 20,000-strong list of suspected noncitizens.

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.”

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