Former Assistant U.S. Attorney, Craig Missakian
Craig Missakian is a well-known trial lawyer and former state and federal prosecutor. During his 15 years in law enforcement, he earned national and international attention for prosecutions that included terrorism and environmental crimes, software piracy, organized crime, and public corruption. His cases have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Times of London, the Washington Post, the National Enquirer, and many other publications. He also taught at the U.S.C. Gould School of Law.
Mr. Missakian’s work as Assistant U.S. Attorney included the conviction of Martin Ludlow, then-head of the powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and a former Los Angeles City Councilman, for embezzling funds from a local labor union. He stood up for the nation’s war heroes when, in the first case of its kind, he prosecuted a member of a Southern California water board under the Stolen Valor Act for falsely claiming to have won the Congressional Medal of Honor – a case that went all the way to the United States Supreme Court.
In 2007, Mr. Missakian co-tried the case of Chi Mak, a Chinese national who headed up a spy ring that included several members of his immediate family and that targeted some of the U.S. Navy’s most closely guarded technologies. Commentator Lou Dobbs described it as the most significant espionage prosecution in a generation and Washington Times writer Bill Gertz featured the case in his book Enemies. Attorney General Michael Mukasey subsequently awarded Mr. Missakian and the other team members the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service, one of the U.S. Department of Justice’s highest honors, for their work on the case.
Mr. Missakian left the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 2010 to become the vice president and general counsel for Westland Real Estate Group, a closely held real estate investment, development, and holding company headquartered in Long Beach, California. In 2014, he was asked to serve as one of the lead lawyers on the House Select Committee on Benghazi where he helped direct the investigation into the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya that took the lives of four Americans. After working in Washington, D.C. on the Benghazi investigation for 2 ½ years he returned to his native Southern California where he now practices law.
Come hear Craig Missakian on the real story behind Benghazi and on Espionage in America!