17-05-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
SoCal lawyer with Benghazi inquiry background tapped for U.S. attorney in S.F.
Craig Missakian, a Southern California attorney and former prosecutor and congressional investigator, has been nominated by President Donald Trump as U.S. attorney in San Francisco, the chief federal prosecutor in Northern California.
Missakian confirmed his selection Friday, which was first reported by the San Francisco Standard, but said he could not make any public statements until May 27, when he is due to be sworn into office.
The office prosecutes federal cases in the Northern District of California, which includes San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa and 11 other coastal counties extending to the Oregon border. President Joe Biden's last appointee as U.S. attorney, Ismail Ramsey, served from March 2023 until February, when he was replaced by his former top aide, Patrick Robbins, who now serves as acting U.S. attorney.
Missakian, a lawyer since 1986, was a federal prosecutor in Southern California from 2001 to 2010. After spending the next four years as a real estate attorney, he was hired by the House of Representatives in 2014 as a lead counsel for the committee investigating the 2012 attack by Islamic militants on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four people, including J. Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya.
Ahmed Abu Khatallah, a Libyan convicted of helping lead the attack, was sentenced to 28 years in prison. The Republican-led House committee found that U.S. military forces, the CIA and the State Department had failed to adequately protect the embassy, but found no evidence of wrongdoing by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Missakian finished his congressional work in December 2016 and has practiced law in Pasadena since then.
