A prosecutor working inside New York Attorney General Letitia James’ own office has accused his bosses of doing something Democrats have spent years accusing President Donald Trump of doing: using government prosecutors to go after political enemies.
And this accusation isn’t coming from Trump. It isn’t coming from a Republican congressman. It isn’t coming from somebody shouting into a microphone outside the courthouse.
It’s coming from Daniel Wiesenfeld, a prosecutor assigned to James’ Investor Protection Bureau.
According to the Times Union, Wiesenfeld sent an email Friday to hundreds of colleagues alleging that he had been instructed “to find and pursue crimes committed by specific individuals and organizations affiliated with Donald Trump.”
Read that wording carefully.
Wiesenfeld’s complaint isn’t simply that his office investigated Trump. Prosecutors investigate specific people and companies all the time when there is a legitimate basis to do so. His allegation is that officials started with particular targets and went looking for crimes afterward.
That is a much more serious accusation.
Prosecutor in NY AG Letitia James’ office says he was ordered to dig up dirt on Trump allies: report. Read today’s cover here: https://t.co/CiptJNKkSO pic.twitter.com/dALSmM0H1X
— New York Post (@nypost) August 31, 2026
Wiesenfeld named his bureau chief, Shamiso Maswoswe, and alleged that Maswoswe directed him to target Trump, Truth Social and Hewlett-Packard “without having a credible reason.”
The Times Union obtained a copy of the message and reported that it was subsequently deleted from state computer servers.
Then Wiesenfeld went straight for the political contradiction.
“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,” he wrote, according to the newspaper.
There’s no subtlety there. None.
“I ask that you not serve as Tish’s personal attorneys by targeting her political enemies,” Wiesenfeld continued. “Instead, I hope you choose to prosecute crimes and find the individuals accountable, rather than targeting individuals and then finding crimes.”
That last distinction is the heart of his entire complaint.
Find a crime, investigate it and determine who committed it? Normal prosecutorial work.
Pick the person first and then start hunting for something to charge? Wiesenfeld says that’s what he was being asked to do.
James’ office strongly rejects that accusation.
After the original email disappeared from state servers, general counsel Kumiki Gibson sent an agency-wide follow-up describing the situation as an “internal” matter and telling employees that nobody was “in danger,” according to people who viewed the communication.
Wiesenfeld was then placed on administrative leave with full pay.
“This is a personnel matter, and the employee in question has been placed on administrative leave with full pay,” James spokeswoman Alexis Richards said.
Richards was equally clear about the broader allegation.
“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,” she said. “We strongly reject any assertion to the contrary.”
So now we have a remarkable internal dispute.
One prosecutor says the office directed him toward political targets without a credible reason. The attorney general’s office says, absolutely not.
But Wiesenfeld wasn’t finished.
I stood on those courthouse steps every day and told you exactly what Letitia James was doing.
She didn’t find a crime and follow the evidence. She picked President Trump and went shopping for one.
They called me a liar.
Now the truth is coming from inside her own office.
— Alina Habba (@AlinaHabba) August 30, 2026
He also accused James of spending “significant public taxpayer dollars to target convenient public enemies” while failing to act against what he called “rampant nonprofit homeless shelter fraud and antisemitic crimes in and around synagogues.”
Those are his allegations, and the email itself does not establish that those other crimes were ignored or that James personally ordered politically motivated investigations.
But there’s a reason this particular accusation lands with some force.
Letitia James and Donald Trump have history. Lots of it.
During her 2018 campaign for attorney general, James made clear that Trump would receive intense scrutiny if she won office.
“We will prosecute the president for crimes committed in New York state,” she declared in December 2018.
Her office eventually brought the civil fraud case against Trump, his sons and the Trump Organization, alleging that Trump had fraudulently inflated the value of assets in financial statements.
That case produced a massive financial judgment in 2024. An appeals court later left the underlying liability findings intact while wiping out the enormous monetary penalty.
Trump and his supporters have long pointed to James’ campaign rhetoric as evidence that her pursuit of him was political. James has consistently maintained that her office followed the facts and enforced New York law.
And now, years into that argument, an accusation with an entirely different pedigree has arrived.
From inside the building.
Again, that does not make Wiesenfeld’s claims proven. An internal email is an allegation, not a verdict, and James’ office has expressly denied that political beliefs determine whom it targets.
But Wiesenfeld has framed the issue in terms that are going to be very difficult to wave away as ordinary partisan sniping. He says he personally received instructions to pursue named targets without a credible basis, and he told hundreds of his colleagues about it.
Then the email was reportedly deleted.
Then he was placed on paid leave.
