Attorney General Todd Blanche looks on as U.S. President Donald Trump (not pictured) receives the report from his Religious Liberty Commission in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 26, 2026.
President Donald Trump's first assistant U.S. attorney keeps getting caught in lies, according to one keen observer.
National security expert Marcy Wheeler pointed to a recent tweet from Bill Essayli listing details about the case against California and Los Angeles County over a conspiracy theory about mail ballots. According to the federal government, 20,000 of the people who got ballots were "likely noncitizens."
The administration has been caught in this fight before. In Nevada, the administration used this same system and claimed that as many as 15,903 noncitizens might be on the state’s voter rolls. The state demanded evidence, and Homeland Security whittled the list down to 185 names, claiming it had "manually" verified they were noncitizens.
Nevada officials then checked the 185 names against state records and concluded every one was a U.S. citizen.
In a letter to DHS, Deputy Attorney General Greg Ott wrote: “As for the 185 individuals, our records indicate that they were citizens,” adding that the federal government had “provided nothing of substance to suggest otherwise.”
Now California must use the same system and face the same allegations. So, the parties asked the judge to block the federal government's demand.
The Justice Department argued that California must segregate those ballots until their citizenship status can be verified, and Attorney General Todd Blanche accused the state of refusing to comply with federal law.
Essayli falsely claimed on X, "Make no mistake: California has no interest in protecting the integrity of its elections. We presented the evidence. Their answers: "It's not widespread fraud." "It's too late we already mailed the ballots." "It's already illegal to vote illegally." "We can't trust your evidence." A law that isn't enforced is meaningless. Today we are asking a court to require California to follow the law and not count ballots cast by noncitizens," he claimed.
Wheeler said that in this case, Essayli was "outright lying here."
She cited, "The same untested garbage that has been shown to be fraudulent in other states. He is confessing to a conspiracy to deprive naturalized citizens, like Harmeet Dhillon, of their right to vote," Wheeler bashed.
Indeed, Essayli's claims still have not been independently verified and resemble a system that failed in Nevada.
His problem is that the lawsuit itself describes the people as “likely noncitizens,” not confirmed noncitizens. California officials say the federal government has not explained the basis for the suspicion or provided enough identifying information to verify the list.