First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli says he expects criminal charges to come out of the federal election-fraud investigations now running in California.
That is the new line, and it raises the stakes considerably.
Essayli told The Glenn Beck Program plainly that he believes the probes will produce defendants. “I expect people will be charged,” he said, while pressing for a wide-scale audit of California’s voter roll.
He also accused state officials of stonewalling federal prosecutors who want access to voter registration records.
Protecting the integrity of California’s elections is a top priority for my office.
California’s election system has serious structural vulnerabilities. Universal vote-by-mail with no voter ID requirements creates conditions where fraud can go undetected and unpunished, eroding…
— F.A. United States Attorney Bill Essayli (@USAttyEssayli) June 5, 2026
Essayli leads a serious operation. The Department of Justice profile lists him as First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, overseeing a team of 500 lawyers, agents, and staff in a district covering roughly 20 million people.
Just the News reported that Essayli’s office is partnering with the FBI on multiple election-fraud investigations.
He said his team and Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who runs the Civil Rights Division, have spent more than a year trying to audit the state under the National Voter Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act, and the Civil Rights Act.
The report noted that California accepted more than 4.2 million mail-in ballots in its recent primary. The state counts mail-in ballots dropped off by 8 PM on Election Day or postmarked by Election Day and received by the following Tuesday.
The outlet also noted that Essayli did not lay out specific fraud evidence in that interview. The expected-charges statement is about where the active investigations are heading, not a claim that prosecutions have already happened.
The audit fight is the other half of this. Essayli has put California on blast for what he calls deliberate obstruction.
California Is Blocking a Federal Audit of Its Voter Rolls
California allows first-time voters to register using forms of ID that most Americans would find surprising, including:
-Gym membership card
-Employer ID card
-Credit or debit card
-Prescription drug label
-Insurance… pic.twitter.com/kOEOzpctmb— F.A. United States Attorney Bill Essayli (@USAttyEssayli) June 7, 2026
FOX 11 Los Angeles reported that Essayli announced the federal investigations in coordination with the FBI, and that his voter-roll audit push with Dhillon is pending before the Ninth Circuit.
The local station reported that Essayli pointed to a prior case involving a Marina del Rey woman charged with allegedly paying people, including unhoused individuals on Skid Row, to register to vote.
FOX 11 also reported that the specific locations, scope, and targets of the current investigations are not public. It is not yet known whether the probes have uncovered irregularities large enough to affect any outcome.
What is clear is the direction. The federal government wants to look at California’s rolls, the state has resisted, and the prosecutor running the show now says he expects indictments.
Dhillon has made the same transparency argument publicly, asking why California is fighting federal access to voter-roll data.
Teamwork/dreamwork.
Ask yourselves — why does California (& many other states) hide their voter rolls from the federal government at the same time they gladly hand them over to liberal activist groups?!
🧐hmmm https://t.co/PXznPFqTZr
— AAGHarmeetDhillon (@AAGDhillon) June 5, 2026
The next move belongs to the Ninth Circuit and to the grand juries Essayli says are doing their work.
California officials can keep insisting there is nothing to see. But the federal prosecutor asking for the records has now told the public what he believes is coming.
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