NY AG Staffer: James Office Told Me to Target Trump — Then the Emails Vanished

A prosecutor in New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office alleged in a Friday all-staff email that his supervisor ordered him to “find and pursue crimes” against President Trump and affiliated entities without a credible predicate. The message was then deleted from office servers. Federal investigators interviewed him for several hours on Tuesday.

Assistant Attorney General Daniel Wiesenfeld, assigned to the Investor Protection Bureau, sent the email to more than 2,000 colleagues. The Albany Times Union obtained a copy. Wiesenfeld wrote that bureau chief Shamiso Maswoswe directed him to target “Trump himself, Truth Social, Hewlett Packard (DOJ approved merger) … without having a credible reason for targeting these organizations and individuals.” He urged colleagues not to “serve as Tish’s personal attorneys by targeting her political enemies” and to “prosecute crimes and find the individuals accountable, rather than targeting individuals and then finding crimes.” He added that if staff believed Trump used Justice Department lawyers against political enemies, they should find it “equally troubling that Tish [James] is doing exactly the same thing.” He also accused the office of spending “significant public taxpayer dollars to target convenient public enemies” while, in his account, leaving unaddressed “rampant nonprofit homeless shelter fraud and antisemitic crimes in and around synagogues.”

The email vanished from inboxes and state servers shortly after it was sent. Some employees never saw it. General Counsel Kumiki Gibson then told staff the episode was an “internal” matter and that no one was “in danger.” James’s office placed Wiesenfeld on paid administrative leave. A spokesman told Fox News Digital: “This is a personnel matter. 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 office has not separately addressed the targeting allegation.

Sources familiar with the matter told the Washington Examiner and the New York Post that Wiesenfeld met Tuesday with criminal and civil attorneys from the FBI and the Justice Department. The interview lasted several hours. Those sources said it is not clear how far federal interest extends or whether a formal investigation has been opened. Wiesenfeld has not spoken publicly since the email.

Wiesenfeld, 34, is a former Brooklyn prosecutor who has worked in the attorney general’s office about seven years and has been assigned to major Investor Protection cases, including an April lawsuit against prediction-market platforms. Maswoswe joined James’s office after serving as a Justice Department Public Integrity trial attorney from 2016 until her termination in December 2017. The New York Post reported she later sued the first Trump administration and reached a $795,000 settlement in 2023.

James campaigned in 2018 on investigating Trump’s business and later won a civil fraud judgment against him and the Trump Organization. White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis called the email “more proof of the weaponization of the justice system by Letitia James to target President Trump and her political opponents.” New York GOP Chairman Ed Cox said James had turned the office into “a political hit squad and then tried to cover up her tracks.”