Essayli says he expects US attorney's office to file election fraud charges in California within a couple of months

Ana Ceballos, Los Angeles Times on Jun 9, 2026

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WASHINGTON — First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said Tuesday that he expects his office to file election fraud charges within a couple of months as it continues to investigate allegations that California Democrats cheated in the state’s primary election.

“We are looking for any sort of wide-scale conspiracy, if you will,” Essayli said in a podcast interview with conservative commentator Glenn Beck. “Right now, our investigation is more into individual actors.”

Essayli acknowledged that a successful prosecution of widespread election fraud would face significant hurdles. Thousands of voters would need to be charged to demonstrate that any misconduct changes the outcome of the California election, unless investigators find evidence of a coordinated, wide-scale fraud scheme, he said.

“We are looking if there is anyone with inside information,” Essayli said. He then asked listeners to report any suspicious activity to a tip line that his office has set up.

When pressed on whether his office has found any evidence of widespread fraud, he said his office is “doing the best we can in the circumstances” and blamed California’s voting system for making it hard to discern whether there is a widespread problem. Essayli also criticized the media for saying there is no evidence of election fraud.

“Of course there is evidence of fraud, just do a google search,” he said. “What they always default to is that there is no evidence it is widespread and that is a very interesting and clever statement because they design a system to not be able to detect the evidence through the system easily.”

Essayli did not provide any evidence of election fraud during the interview, but his remarks echo claims House Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump have made in recent days to cast doubt over California’s election results.

“I am not saying it is rigged, I am saying it stinks to high heaven and everybody knows that,” Johnson told reporters on Monday. “Look, some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far up upstream it’s impossible to prove. But I think everybody knows instinctively that something is wrong here.”