The public face of the effort is Los Angeles-based prosecutor Bill Essayli, a former MAGA state politician who was disqualified from serving as U.S. Attorney last year because he failed to attain Senate confirmation.
Essayli remained in his office anyway by adopting the title “First Assistant” to the vacant U.S. Attorney seat, but he is likely to be ousted from that position in the wake of a recent Ninth Circuit ruling, which disqualified his fellow Trump-loyalist prosecutor Sigal Chattah under nearly identical circumstances.
With the legitimacy of his own position in doubt, Essayli has been aggressively peddling the Trump administration’s election fraud claims on TV, social media and right-wing podcasts. He insists that the 28 cases brought by prosecutors vindicated the administration’s voter fraud claims.
Los Angeles reporters quickly poked holes in that narrative: Seven of the defendants never cast a ballot and were accused of illegal voter registration. Poring over registration records, the publication LA Material found that the supposed poster child of noncitizen voting, a 72-year-old man named Omar Muñoz, is a registered Republican.
Reporting live from the courthouse, The Los Angeles Times spoke to Mr. Muñoz and his family and painted a disturbing portrait of his arrest:
“Muñoz, who declined to comment on the charges against him, said he’d been up to have coffee early that morning when he heard the commotion outside. Agents said if he didn’t open the door, they’d break it down.
He described seeing helicopters, at least eight cars and several agents from different agencies descending on his home, and recalled thinking, “What movie am I in?”
“That’s a lot of money. Taxpayers paying for that,” he said. “They could have sent me a letter saying report to the court.”
Muñoz — who said he came to the U.S. legally in 1975 and has “paid all my taxes” since — said he explained to the arresting agents that he’d had six surgeries recently and they “didn’t care.” He said he didn’t learn about the charges against him until four hours later.”
Muñoz’s wife described the scene as overkill for her injured, septuagenarian husband accused of a nonviolent offense.
“Seriously? All these people just to come for an elderly person,” she recounted telling a federal agent, according to the Los Angeles Times. “It’s unbelievable.”
He wasn’t alone: Ana Domínguez, a 60-year-old from El Salvador, showed off the bruises on her wrists to reporters concerning her arrest, and she said that she didn’t remember registering to vote in July 2006, as her charges allege. It’s undisputed that she never voted in the decades since.
She and other defendants profiled by the Los Angeles Times deny the accusations.
Watch a video breakdown about why questions concerning Essayli’s legitimacy matter on the full All Rise News playlist on Legal AF here.
Paid subscribers can watch the videos ad-free below.
Other videos below the paywall:
* The BBC wants Jack Smith’s testimony against Trump.
* The Jan. 6 Memory Project rescues the history Trump wanted to bury.
* The topic of corruption breaks through as a top concern for midterm voters.
