A lawyer in New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office accused his supervisors of identifying political targets tied to President Donald Trump and then looking for crimes to pursue against them, according to an internal email obtained by the Albany Times Union.
Assistant Attorney General Daniel Wiesenfeld told more than 2,000 colleagues Friday that his supervisor had ordered him “to find and pursue crimes committed by specific individuals and organizations affiliated with Donald Trump.”
Wiesenfeld, who works in the Investor Protection Bureau in Manhattan, identified bureau chief Shamiso Maswoswe as the official who told him to focus on “Trump himself, Truth Social, Hewlett Packard (DOJ approved merger) … without having a credible reason for targeting this organizations and individuals.”
The email was removed from state servers and employee inboxes soon after it was sent. James’s general counsel, Kumiki Gibson, later circulated an office-wide message calling the episode an “internal” matter and telling employees that no one was “in danger,” according to three people familiar with the message.
James’s office placed Wiesenfeld on paid administrative leave and denied his allegations, but this isn’t the first time that prosecutors revealed that they wanted to target Trump by any means necessary.
“This is a personnel matter, and the employee in question has been placed on administrative leave with full pay,” spokesperson Alexis Richards said. “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.”
Wiesenfeld, a former Brooklyn assistant district attorney who has worked for the attorney general’s office for about two years, explicitly compared what he described inside James’s office with accusations James has made against Trump’s Justice Department.
“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. “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.”
He also accused James of spending “significant public taxpayer dollars to target convenient public enemies” while ignoring what he called “rampant nonprofit homeless shelter fraud and antisemitic crimes in and around synagogues.”
His reference to Hewlett-Packard appears to concern HP’s $14 billion bid for Juniper Networks, which James and other state attorneys general opposed after the Justice Department approved the deal.
The dispute comes after years of legal and political conflict between James and Trump. During her first campaign for attorney general, James said in December 2018, “We will prosecute the president for crimes committed in New York state.”
Her office later brought the civil fraud case against the Trump Organization that resulted in a Manhattan judge imposing more than $360 million in penalties for “ill-gotten gains.” An appellate court in August 2025 upheld the liability finding but threw out the financial penalty.
Trump’s Justice Department has, in turn, investigated James over mortgage- and bank-fraud allegations. Her attorney, Abbe Lowell, called that effort “political retribution” in a 2025 letter to then-Attorney General Pam Bondi.
James’s office has also filed numerous lawsuits against the Trump administration. More recently, a federal appeals court ruled that John A. Sarcone III, who had been serving as acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York, was not lawfully appointed and could not issue subpoenas seeking records from James’s office involving Trump family businesses and the National Rifle Association.
Wiesenfeld’s allegations have not been independently verified. James’s office says they are false and describes the matter as a personnel dispute.
