Bilal A. "Bill" Essayli is a lawyer and Republican former member of the California State Assembly who is First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California. He represented the 63rd Assembly District from December 2022 to April 2025, and earlier worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles and Riverside and as a Riverside County deputy district attorney. He was interim and then acting U.S. Attorney for the district in 2025 before taking his current title on October 29, 2025.
Case
California's AB 2760 bars all law enforcement, including federal agents, from using electric shock gloves. Newsom and the author defend the ban. DHS and a federal prosecutor reject California's authority over federal agents. As of October 1, 2026, no court has ruled.
Role at the time: First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, in a post on his official X account
Response to this claim
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said on September 29, 2026 that California has no jurisdiction to regulate federal agents and that he had advised the Department of Homeland Security to disregard AB 2760.
“Governor, we’ve been through this already. If you want to regulate federal agents, you have to win a federal election. Until then, you have no jurisdiction. Accordingly, I have advised DHS to disregard your bill attempting to ban safe and effective less-lethal tools that agents need to escalate dangerous situations.”
Relative to the ban as applied to federal officers, Essayli rejects it as beyond California's power, says he told DHS to disregard it, and calls the tools it bans safe and effective. The post answers mainly the question of state power, with a brief characterization of the gloves' safety. We used Condemned because he rejects the ban as unenforceable against federal agents. The closest competing label is Challenges the characterization, because he disputes that California may regulate federal agents at all, but he goes on to reject the bill itself and tell DHS to disregard it.
Statement dates: September 29, 2026
Statement dates: September 29, 2026
Statement dates: September 29, 2026
