President Donald Trump has long accused New York Attorney General Letitia James of using the power of her office to target him and his allies. A stunning new allegation from one of her own prosecutors may have just proved him right.
According to the Times Union:
A prosecutor in the New York attorney general’s office sent an agency-wide email to hundreds of colleagues Friday claiming that he had been instructed by his supervisor “to find and pursue crimes committed by specific individuals and organizations affiliated with Donald Trump,” according to a copy of the email obtained by the Times Union.
The prosecutor, who was assigned to the Investor Protection Bureau, alleged in his email that his bureau chief, Shamiso Maswoswe, had directed him to target “Trump himself, Truth Social, Hewlett Packard (DOJ approved merger) … without having a credible reason for targeting this organizations and individuals.”
The email sent early Friday by Assistant Attorney General Daniel Wiesenfeld, who officials said has worked for the attorney general’s office for about two years, was quickly deleted from the office’s servers and vanished from the inboxes of more than 2,000 employees. A follow-up agency-wide email subsequently sent by Attorney General Letitia James’ general counsel, Kumiki Gibson, informed employees that it was an “internal” matter and that no one in the office was “in danger,” according to three people familiar with the communication.
Responding to the Times Union’s request for comment, James’ spokeswoman Alexis Richards said in a statement:
This is a personnel matter, and the employee in question has been placed on administrative leave with full pay. The office of the attorney general is committed to upholding New York’s laws and protecting the rights and freedoms of all New Yorkers, regardless of political beliefs. We strongly reject any assertion to the contrary.
The outlet reported that after his first email was deleted, Wiesenfeld sent a second one which began, “The best part of having f*** you money is being able to tell the truth, without fear of consequences so here we go.”
He wrote:
If you believe Trump is using (Department of Justice) attorneys to prosecute his enemies and further his political interests, you should find it equally troubling that Tish [James] is doing exactly the same thing. I ask that you not serve as Tish’s personal attorneys by targeting her political enemies. Instead, I hope you choose to prosecute crimes and find the individuals accountable, rather than targeting individuals and then finding crimes.
Additionally, Wiesenfeld alleged that while James had used “significant public taxpayer dollars to target convenient public enemies,” she has done nothing about “rampant nonprofit homeless shelter fraud and antisemitic crimes in and around synagogues.”
Prosecutor in AG Letitia James’ office says he was ordered to dig up dirt on Trump allies: report https://t.co/3sibg9ZJq8 pic.twitter.com/Qk5n6OiniN
— New York Post (@nypost) August 30, 2026
James made it clear during her 2018 campaign for attorney general that she would use the law to take down Trump. “This illegitimate president — I look forward to going into the office of the attorney general every day, suing him, and then going home,” she said.
She kept her word. In September 2022, James filed a civil fraud lawsuit against Trump, accusing him of violating an obscure state anti-fraud law by inflating the value of his assets to secure more favorable terms on commercial loans. The loans were repaid in full, and no lender was defrauded.
After a deeply one-sided trial that made a mockery of impartial justice, Trump was found liable in February 2024. Far-left Judge Arthur Engoron ordered him to pay a massive $355 million fine, plus more than $98 million in prejudgment interest.
James found it impossible to contain her glee. She took to X to show followers just how much money Trump owed the state of New York: “$464,576,230.62.”
$464,576,230.62
— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) February 23, 2024
Trump appealed both the ruling and the penalty. In August 2025, a New York appeals court left the fraud judgment intact but struck down the enormous financial penalty.
How inappropriate was this case and the penalty that followed? George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley noted at the time that “[e]ven the New York Times agreed that it could not find a single case in history where this statute was used against an individual or a company that did not commit a criminal offense, go bankrupt, or leave financial victims.”
Last October, Trump struck back. James was indicted by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia on charges of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. The indictment was dismissed the following month after a federal judge ruled that the interim U.S. attorney who brought the case [Lindsey Halligan] had been unlawfully appointed. The dismissal was without prejudice, but subsequent efforts to revive the prosecution failed when two federal grand juries declined to indict James.
Exclusive. Breaking. NY AG Leticia James has been indicted on one count of bank fraud in Alexandria, Virginia. https://t.co/tr4Q9zpKco
— Ken Dilanian (@KDilanianMSNOW) October 9, 2025
James has spent years insisting that her pursuit of Trump was about enforcing the law, not politics. Wiesenfeld’s allegations, if substantiated, would turn that defense on its head. His charge is not merely that James’ office investigated Trump and his allies, but that prosecutors were instructed to start with political targets and then go looking for crimes. Coming from inside the attorney general’s own office — and against the backdrop of James’ campaign promise to go after Trump — that is an allegation that will be difficult to dismiss as just another partisan attack.
Ah, schadenfreude.
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