The inevitable firing of most US Attorneys appointed by Biden has come to pass, and our US Attorney for the Northern District of California Ismail Ramsey just got the axe.

It is fairly normal for many of the Department of Justice’s US Attorneys (there are 93 of these “head lawyers” nationwide) to step down when a new party’s president takes the White House. They are generally asked to resign by the new president, and they do so.

But as President Trump goes on his purge of the Department of Justice and FBI after his own criminal prosecutions, Reuters reports that Trump fired a bunch of US Attorneys this week, with letters that merely read "At the direction of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as U.S. Attorney is terminated, effective immediately."

KPIX reports these firings also included the firing of the Northern District of California’s US Attorney Ismail Ramsey, and the other three California US Attorneys as well. While it’s technically unclear if Ramsey resigned or was fired, it sure looks like he was fired.

“I talked to him last week and I said 'I’m surprised you’re still there,'” UC Law professor Rory Little told KPIX. “And not in so many words, he kind of said, ‘Yeah, me too.’”

Ramsey was appointed by Biden in 2022, and it drew curiosity that he had been the defense attorney for City Hall bribe-taker Mohammed Nuru and Uber-Waymo industry trade secrets thief Anthony Levandowski. But Ramsey had both defended and prosecuted many accused criminals over his very successful career, and he will surely do just fine going back into private practice as a mega-bucks attorney.    

Ismail Ramsey is not a household name, but you’ve read his name plenty on this site if you ever click on articles about federally prosecuted crimes. He was particularly aggressive in going after fentanyl trade kingpins and police corruption in Antioch and Pittsburg.  

Assistant US Attorney Patrick Robbins takes over Ramsey’s job on an interim basis until Trump names a replacement.

Ramsey went quietly, with his office merely telling Reuters he had "concluded his leadership.” Others are not going quietly.


As Trump moves to dismiss the case against obviously corrupt New York Mayor Eric Adams, just because Adams has turned Trump suck-up, the Southern District of New York’s Assistant United States Attorney Hagan Scotten resigned with a letter saying, “I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your [dismissal] motion. But it was never going to be me.”

The New York Times also has parsed the angrily written letter to the DOJ by interim US attorney for the Southern District of New York Danielle Sassoon, who also resigned on Thursday, protesting the order to dismiss the indictment against Adams, which says in part, "I remain baffled by the rushed and superficial process by which this decision was reached, in seeming collaboration with Adams's counsel and without my direct input on the ultimate stated rationales for dismissal."

Related: Biden Chooses Berkeley Attorney (and Mohammed Nuru’s Lawyer!) to Be New U.S. Attorney [SFist]

Image: Anthony Z. via Yelp