Democrat Will Rollins has made his prosecutorial record central to his rematch against Rep. Ken Calvert (R., Calif.). The Palm Springs lawyer repeatedly boasted that he went after ISIS, the Sinaloa cartel, and MS-13 when he worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Central District of California.
"Rollins, a counterterrorism prosecutor, took on ISIS terrorists and went after the Sinaloa cartel to stop illegal drugs from crossing our border," said a February ad, which made salacious allegations about Calvert and called him "one of the most corrupt members of Congress."
The ad ended with Rollins saying, "I’m Will Rollins, and I approve this message because I’ve spent my career fighting to keep our families safe."
But there’s no available evidence that Rollins had any role in fighting the Sinaloa Cartel or ISIS. His only documented involvement in fighting MS-13? He helped negotiate a lenient plea deal for a meth dealer who was once on a list of "members and associates" of the gang.
Indeed, an exhaustive Washington Free Beacon review found no documentation indicating Rollins participated in the prosecution of anyone tied to ISIS or the Sinaloas during his five-year stint as an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles. Rollins also claims he’s gone after "murderers," but the Free Beacon connected only one homicide case to the junior prosecutor—one that wasn’t resolved until two years after Rollins had quit his job.
In early August, the Free Beacon began asking the Rollins campaign to provide information about the candidate’s record during his tenure from 2016 to 2021 in the Central District, which includes Los Angeles and its surrounding suburbs. The Rollins campaign did not respond to any of the Free Beacon’s inquiries. Rollins’s extensive public claims—on his campaign website, social media, and press interviews—don’t cite specific cases or link to Department of Justice or FBI press releases.
The Free Beacon reviewed every federal court case that mentioned Rollins, scouring through reams of documents. The review also included extensive searches of the Central District’s website.
The Mexico-based Sinaloa cartel—which controls much of the drug trade—along with the sadistically violent Salvadoran immigrant gang, MS-13, and the Islamic terrorists of ISIS are three of the world’s most feared criminal organizations, and many ambitious young prosecutors would jump at the chance to battle them. But since Rollins’s name doesn’t appear on any public government documents involving Sinaloa or ISIS, it is highly unlikely he had a meaningful role in such cases, according to a former assistant U.S. attorney who spoke on the condition of anonymity. It is possible he was involved in more minor ways that kept his name off cases, like writing search warrants and applying for digital surveillance, or in supervising cases that others actually prosecuted.
Furthermore, the law firm where Rollins currently works makes no mention of ISIS, the Sinaloa cartel, or MS-13 on his biography page. Instead, Raines Feldman Littrell, a Los Angeles-based corporate law firm that must accurately represent its lawyers to its clients, simply says that Rollins prosecuted "a wide variety of U.S. counterterrorism, export control, and national security laws" as an assistant U.S. attorney.
The Free Beacon found one instance in which Rollins prosecuted a member of MS-13 for dealing meth—and struck a sweetheart plea deal. In that 2012 case, Juan Carlos Garcia was caught dealing 80 grams of meth in front of his children. He faced two distribution charges, one carrying a prison sentence of up to 40 years, the other a life sentence. Rollins dropped one count and helped Garcia score the mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison for the other.
A 2013 FBI press release lists Garcia among "members and associates of the MS-13 street gang." Garcia’s indictment, however, doesn’t mention gang membership, nor does his pleading. His court judgment only noted that he was barred from associating with known members or wearing anything connected to MS-13.
Rollins’s attempts to use his stint in government to boost his campaign have become a flashpoint in his campaign. A county GOP chairman challenged Rollins’s bid to describe himself as a "counterterrorism attorney" on the primary ballot, and a judge ruled that he must instead describe himself as a "counterterrorism law attorney."
On the campaign trail, Rollins has exaggerated his prosecutorial record. In August, he posted on X that he "took on … January 6th insurrectionists." He’d previously claimed on the third anniversary of the Capitol riot that he "helped prosecute Southern California residents who participated in the January 6 attack."
In reality, the Free Beacon reported, Rollins was involved in a single Jan. 6 case, that of cosmetologist Gina Bisignano, the so-called "Beverly Hills insurrectionist." Bisignano became the object of global ridicule for shouting, "You are not going to take away our Trumpy Bear!" into a megaphone outside the Capitol while wearing a Louis Vuitton sweater and Chanel boots. Her case is still pending, long after Rollins left government service.
Rollins has also said in campaign ads that he’s "put away" members of a gang called the Mexican Mafia. The United States-based prison and street gang organizes other Hispanic gangs to establish a larger network of illegal activities.
The Free Beacon’s review found Rollins was involved in two cases that were peripherally connected to the Mexican Mafia. In both, Rollins signed off on lenient plea deals that gave the gang members light prison sentences for serious crimes.
Julio Cesar Alvarado faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for a firearm charge in June 2016. He admitted he was a member of the Eastside Santa Ana gang, an affiliate of the Mexican Mafia. Rollins struck a plea deal, and Alvarado was sentenced to just two years in prison.
Justin Robert Burkett, a known member of the Westside VLP gang, another Mexican Mafia affiliate, was busted with 120 grams of meth and a stolen .38 caliber revolver. He faced a life sentence for peddling drugs and another five years for the gun crime. But Rollins dropped the firearm charge and helped Burkett score a 10-year prison sentence, the mandatory minimum for the distribution count. Burkett was also required to participate in a substance abuse program once he got out of prison.
Rollins also claims to have helped put murderers in prison. He did, in fact, help prosecute Stephen William Beal, a Long Beach man accused of sending a package bomb to his ex-girlfriend’s day spa, killing her and gravely injuring two others. The sensational case was featured on "Dateline NBC."
This past January, Beal was sentenced to life in prison in addition to 30 years in federal prison. But Rollins was long gone from the U.S. attorney’s office, having left in September 2021 to challenge Calvert for the first time. That’s about two years before Beal was found guilty, let alone sentenced.
Rollins lost narrowly to Calvert in 2022—he was considered one of the country’s top "overperformers"—and their rematch is expected to be tight, Politico reports. This time, the swing district may be more favorable to Rollins. Recent redistricting swapped heavily Republican areas in California’s Inland Empire for parts of the Coachella Valley that include overwhelmingly liberal Palm Springs, which may have the country’s highest per capita gay population.