New York Attorney General Letitia James, circled, watches as then-former President Trump appears for his civil fraud trial in New York State Supreme Court on Oct. 2, 2023. Brendan McDermid-Pool/Getty Images See more of our coverage in your search results.
Add The New York Post on Google We know Trump-deranged New York Attorney General Letitia James campaigned on jailing the president, but an explosive all-staff email from one of her star prosecutors Friday claims her office explicitly directed him to “find and pursue crimes” to pin on Donald Trump and his allies, according to the Albany Times- Union.
In a bridge-burning email to 2,000 colleagues at 10 a.m. Friday, Assistant Attorney General Daniel Wiesenfeld claimed that he had been instructed by his supervisor “to find and pursue crimes committed by specific individuals and organizations affiliated with Donald Trump.”
“The best part of having f–k you money is being able to tell the truth, without fear of consequences so here we go,” his email began, before listing James’ efforts to frame Trump, according to a readout provided to The Post.
Wiesenfeld, 34, alleged his boss, 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 . . .
“Presumably she acted at the behest of Tish [James] . . .
“Tish’s personal grudges with Trump sets the agenda. Find a crime and any crime of his would do.”
He pointed out that James is using “significant public taxpayer dollars to target convenient public enemies” while ignoring “rampant non-profit homeless shelter fraud, Medicaid fraud, and crimes in and around synagogues,” he wrote.
“Tish is prioritizing political theater and getting re-elected in November over actually improving the quality of life of New Yorkers.
“Going after Trump, even unsuccessfully, wins elections in New York. Tracking down inconspicuous and very real crimes does not.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James looks on as then-former President Trump attends the Trump Organization civil fraud trial in Manhattan on Oct. 25, 2023. REUTERS Within an hour of Wiesenfeld pressing send, his email was remotely deleted from the inboxes of all employees in a major damage-control operation, and vanished from the department’s servers so quickly that some employees did not have a chance to read it.
Soon after, an agency-wide email was sent by James’ general counsel, Kumiki Gibson, telling employees not to worry about Wiesenfeld’s communications, which were an “internal” matter. Gibson added that nobody in the office was “in danger,” a curious comment reported by the Times- Union.
Wiesenfeld, a prosecutor in the Investor Protection Bureau section of the AG’s Financial District headquarters on Liberty Street, has been placed on paid administrative leave.
He was unavailable for comment. Reached by phone on Sunday, his father, also Daniel Wiesenfeld, said his son was not talking to the media at this stage. He would not elaborate on what his son meant by having “f–k you money,” but said he is a “very good person.”
Wiesenfeld, 34, was a J.D. candidate, Class of 2018, at NYU Law School and editor of Quorum, NYU’s online-only Journal of Legislation and Public Policy. He moved from the Brooklyn DA’s Office, where he earned a salary of $115,000 working on domestic violence and other criminal cases, to join the state AG’s office in June 2024 so that he could be of greater service to New Yorkers.
“He’s a very, very good solid guy, very dedicated,” says his father.
Wiesenfeld is spot on in his criticism of James’ abuse of her office. Since coming to office in 2019, she has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on selective prosecutions and political games that do nothing to keep New Yorkers safe.
When it comes to the antisemitism that has engulfed this city for the past three years, she has been AWOL. She ignored the plight of New York Jews harassed in the street and blocked from entering synagogues by pro-Hamas mobs. Yet she found the time to go after Betar, a small Zionist group that used to stage counterprotests to defend Jews, with James accusing them of waging a “campaign of violence, harassment, and intimidation against Arab, Muslim, and Jewish New Yorkers.” Under the threat of a $50,000 fine, her office forced Betar to close down its New York operations.
Medicaid fraud convictions have plummeted on James’ watch to one or two a year, but nobody believes that the $100 billion a year program is squeaky clean, least of all the Department of Health and Human Services, which has frozen federal grant money over allegations of uninvestigated fraud. The Department of Justice is suing New York over a $10 billion home-care program.
It’s the same with homeless-shelter fraud in New York, with nepotism, no-bid contracts and astronomical executive pay going unchecked.
The double standards are staggering. It’s only surprising that more prosecutors haven’t quit.
Every week, Post columnist Miranda Devine sits down for exclusive and candid conversations with the most influential disruptors in Washington on ‘Pod Force One.’ Subscribe here!
While turning a blind eye to fraud and violence, James has spent years pursuing Trump, his company, his CFO and his adult sons, alleging they had committed fraud by exaggerating the worth of his assets to get favorable bank loans, even though he repaid all the loans and the banks were happy.
Trump-deranged Justice Arthur Engoron found for James, but New York’s Appellate Division threw out the half-billion-dollar penalty as excessive last year, with some judges questioning whether the case should have been brought. The whole mess currently sits with the Court of Appeals.
Wiesenfeld’s reference to Hewlett Packard’s $14 billion merger with Silicon Valley wireless company Juniper Networks is another pet “Get Trump” project of James and her Democrat colleagues. The deal was initially blocked by the Trump DOJ before getting the green light last year on national security grounds over objections from blue state AGs, including James, who challenged the deal in court.
“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,” Wiesenfeld wrote.
The hypocrisy was not lost on Sam Antar, a forensic accountant who uncovered mortgage fraud allegedly committed by James for which she was indicted by the Trump DOJ in controversial litigation that is still ongoing.
Antar, who was convicted of securities fraud in the 1980s before turning over a new leaf as an SEC whistleblower, was maligned in court by James’ lawyer Abbe Lowell as a “right-wing ‘investigator’ [and] fringe blogger” aiding Trump efforts to weaponize the DOJ by targeting James as “retribution.”
Get Miranda’s latest take Sign up for Devine Online, the newsletter from Miranda Devine
But despite the political tit for tat, Antar, 69, says he discovered James’ mortgage documents by chance when he was looking into her exorbitant expense claims at Martha’s Vineyard.
“Nobody directs me,” he says. “I’m a Democrat, and I’ve been doing this forensic accounting for 20 years. I don’t even like Trump.
“This was a legitimate case. [James’] fingerprints were all over documents for 30 years in black and white . . . Deeds. Mortgages. Loan applications. Tax records. Her own filings.”
Now one of James’ own prosecutors alleges that her office started with a target and went looking for a crime.
Regardless of what you think of the president, it’s undeniable that the AG’s Trump derangement has damaged New York, and she does not deserve another term.
