Judge rules US attorney ‘unlawfully serving’

What happened

A federal judge on Tuesday disqualified acting California U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli from three Justice Department cases, ruling that he had been “unlawfully serving in that role” past a legal expiration date and without Senate confirmation. But U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright said Essayli could continue to serve as first assistant U.S. attorney, “effectively leaving him as the office’s top prosecutor,” said The Associated Press.

Who said what

Seabright’s ruling “represents another setback” for the White House’s effort to “extend handpicked acting U.S. attorneys beyond the 120-day limit set by federal law,” said the AP. Since August, other federal judges have disqualified Alina Habba in New Jersey and Sigal Chattah in Nevada, “though in both cases they stayed their orders” to allow appeals, said The Washington Post. Similar challenges are also pending against acting U.S. Attorneys Ryan Ellison in New Mexico and Lindsey Halligan in Virginia.

Seabright notably rejected calls to drop the three cases Essayli had worked on, saying in his order that they had been “lawfully signed by other attorneys for the government” without signs of “due process violations or other irregularities.” The ruling “creates leadership uncertainty in the nation’s largest judicial district,” said The New York Times, but since Essayli can remain on as first assistant, it’s “unclear what the practical effect” will be.

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What next?

“Nothing is changing,” Essayli said on social media. “I’m not planning to go anywhere,” he told reporters yesterday. Under federal law, judges of the federal district court could appoint an interim U.S. attorney until a Senate-confirmed nominee is installed.