Bill Essayli
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.”
A post from the official account of First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, written as a response to the Governor's press office announcement that Newsom had signed 21 bills including the shock-glove ban. The text reads, in full, '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.' and, in a second paragraph, '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.'
Why we used this label
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.