President Donald Trump last week fired Ismail Ramsey as the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, completing an expected clean-slate replacement of the state’s four top federal prosecutors.

The Feb. 13 firing, given that Ramsey was appointed by President Joe Biden in March 2023 and is a former board member of the American Civil Liberties Union, came as no surprise.

Ramsey was immediately replaced by his top assistant prosecutor, Patrick Robbins, who will serve as acting U.S. attorney until the President names a permanent federal prosecutor to lead the high profile U.S. attorney’s office, based in San Francisco, which also serves Silicon Valley and San Jose.

Ramsey and Robbins had been colleagues in 1999-2003 as assistant federal prosecutors in the Northern District office.

Ramsey got his dismissal letter one day after Trump fired Tara McGrath as the top prosecutor in San Diego’s Southern District office.

Ramsey has been credited with stepping up enforcement of fentanyl trafficking, as well as corruption indictments against police officers in Antioch and Pittsburg and prosecution of white-collar crimes in Silicon Valley.

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins called Ramsey's dismissal "heartbreaking."

Ramsey and McGrath had been the two holdouts in California, choosing not to resign, as their counterparts, Phil Talbert in Sacramento and Martin Estrada in Los Angeles, had done in January shortly after Trump’s swearing in. Traditionally, new presidents replace nearly all lead attorneys in federal judicial districts across the U.S., as they are presidential appointments.

The departures usually come in response to letters from the Justice Department requesting resignations. Trump, of “Apprentice” fame, chose the “You’re fired” approach for Ramsey and McGrath.

Ramsey’s dismissal also came the same day that the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, announced her resignation after refusing to follow a directive from Attorney General Pam Bondi to drop the office’s corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Trump has accelerated the federal prosecutor replacement process at a faster rate than his predecessors, including his own first term, to provide stronger support for his deportation policies and other initiatives.

Ramsey is a politically connected veteran former prosecutor and high-profile criminal defense lawyer with strong ties to Democrats Kamala Harris and Willie Brown. Ramsey is on the faculty at Stanford and Berkeley law schools.

There were no statements or press releases or posts from Ramsey’s office or from the Justice Department or the White House about his dismissal. McGrath’s office issued a Feb. 12 press release that said she “conclude[d] [her] tenure as chief law enforcement officer” the same day,  without any reference to a dismissal or resignation. The press release touted McGrath’s accomplishments since her appointment in October 2023.

Patrick Robbins served as an assistant prosecutor in the Northern District office from 1995 to 2004 and returned to the office in July 2023. The UCLA grad earned a summa cum laude law degree from American University and served as a law clerk to Aubrey E. Robinson, Jr., chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.