federal judge ruled in August that Alina Habba<\/a> has been illegally occupying the U.S. attorney post in New Jersey, although that order was put on hold pending appeal. Last month, a federal judge disqualified Nevada\u2019s top federal prosecutor, Sigal Chattah, from several cases, concluding she \u201cis not validly serving as acting U.S. attorney.\u201d <\/p>\nThe judges who ruled on the Nevada and New Jersey cases did not dismiss the charges against defendants, instead ordering that those cases not be supervised by Habba or Chattah. <\/p>\n
Flynn argued that the remedies in other states \u201chave not been effective to deter the conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis court has the benefit of additional weeks and has seen the government\u2019s response to that determination that their appointments were illegal and I submit the government hasn\u2019t gotten the message,\u201d Flynn said.<\/p>\n
Flynn said another option could be a dismissal without prejudice, which means the government could bring the case against their clients again. He called it a \u201cweaker medicine\u201d than dismissal with prejudice, \u201cbut would be a stronger one than offered in New Jersey and Nevada.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hearing grew testy at times, with Seabright demanding that Assistant U.S. Atty. Robbins tell him when Essayli\u2019s term will end. Robbins told the judge the government believes it will end on Feb. 24 and that afterward the role of acting U.S. attorney will remain vacant.<\/p>\n
Robbins noted that Essayli has also been designated as first assistant U.S. attorney, essentially allowing him to remain in charge of the office if he loses the \u201cacting\u201d title. <\/p>\n
Bondi in July also appointed him as a \u201cspecial attorney.\u201d Robbins told the judge that \u201cthere\u2019s no developed challenge to Mr. Essayli\u2019s appointment as a special attorney or his designation as a first assistant.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe defense challenge here, the stated interest that they have, is Bill Essayli cannot be acting,\u201d Robbins said. \u201cBut they don\u2019t have a compelling or strong response to Bill Essayli is legitimately in the office and he can be the first assistant … he can supervise other people in the office.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seabright asked both sides to brief him by Thursday on \u201cwhatever hats you believe [Essayli\u2019s] wearing now\u201d and \u201cwhether I were to say he wasn\u2019t legitimately made acting U.S. attorney … what hats does he continue to wear.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cIf I understand the government\u2019s proposed remedy correctly … it would essentially be no remedy at all, because they would be re-creating Mr. Essayli as the acting United States attorney, he\u2019d just be wearing a first assistant hat,\u201d Flynn said.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney\u2019s office in L.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n
When asked by a Times reporter last month about the motion to disqualify him, Essayli said \u201cthe president won the election.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe American people provided him a mandate to run the executive branch, including the U.S. attorney\u2019s office and I look forward to serving at the pleasure of the president,\u201d he said during a news conference.<\/p>\n
Since taking office, Essayli has doggedly pursued Trump\u2019s agenda, championing hard-line immigration enforcement in Southern California, often using the president\u2019s language verbatim at news conferences. His tenure has sparked discord in the office,<\/a> with dozens of prosecutors quitting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge heard arguments Tuesday to decide whether maneuvers used by the Trump administration to install Bill…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":304364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[29414,1582,276,6517,56699,25241,41218,154412,454,2961,224,5337,617,401,1812,154414,154413,66650,154415,2326],"class_list":{"0":"post-304363","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-bill-essayli","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-case","12":"tag-challenge","13":"tag-downtown-l-a","14":"tag-federal-judge","15":"tag-flynn","16":"tag-government","17":"tag-la","18":"tag-los-angeles","19":"tag-losangeles","20":"tag-nevada","21":"tag-new-jersey","22":"tag-office","23":"tag-robbin","24":"tag-seabright","25":"tag-top-federal-prosecutor","26":"tag-tuesday-hearing","27":"tag-u-s-attorney"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115376145371011222","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}