A fired New York prosecutor claims Attorney General Letitia James ordered him to keep chasing President Trump after investigators found no wrongdoing, insisting what she wanted is what she got.
The Post reported that Daniel Wiesenfeld, a former prosecutor in the state Attorney General’s Investor Protection Bureau, said he was told to keep digging on a Trump-related tip long after his team concluded no crime had occurred.
Wiesenfeld described a year-long effort that started with a thin lead and ended with his termination after he went public. He said the pressure came from the top.
In a Wednesday interview, he laid out how the assignment began, why his unit wanted to shut it down, and how he was ordered to keep going anyway.
On July 25, 2025, Wiesenfeld was assigned to investigate an insider-trading claim against a company tied to the Trump family. The tip came from a cryptic text on an unlisted number and pointed at Donald Trump Jr. and associates allegedly selling inside information for millions.
Wiesenfeld said he asked for more context on the text. Bureau Chief Shamiso Maswoswe told him the office could not provide it.
His team then “affirmatively conclude[d] that no crime had taken place.”
By June 2026, after several meetings, the prosecutors were worn out. Wiesenfeld said Maswoswe agreed with them in substance and would have closed the matter if the decision were hers.
"Shamiso told us, in sum and substance, that she agreed with us and that if it were her call, she would close the case, but that it was Tish’s call."
He put the chain of command in plain terms.
"Tish was the boss and what Tish wanted, Tish got. So we had to keep going."
Wiesenfeld said he told supervisors the probe was a waste of time with no path forward. He was directed anyway to send subpoenas to several banks, which he called a fruitless, politically motivated use of taxpayer money and bank resources.
In August, Wiesenfeld blasted a message to more than 2,000 colleagues. The Times-Union obtained a copy and made it public, setting off a firestorm inside the office.
He compared the conduct he described inside the New York Attorney General’s Office to the politicized prosecutions he said critics accuse President Trump of directing at the federal level.
"If you believe Trump is using the Department of Justice attorneys to prosecute his enemies to further his political interests, you should find it equally troubling that Tish is doing exactly the same thing."
He urged colleagues not to act as personal lawyers for the attorney general against her political opponents, and to prosecute crimes rather than pick targets first and hunt for offenses later.
After the email spread, the office placed him on administrative leave. He was later fired.
James’s office has framed the exit as discipline, not retaliation. That account collides with Wiesenfeld’s claim that the real problem was his refusal to keep a dead case alive, a dispute that now sits alongside broader scrutiny of the attorney general’s record, including coverage of Letitia James facing charges in a developing legal fight.
A James spokesperson said the office acts when an attorney “violates the law, the New York Rules of Professional Conduct, or agency policy.”
"Mr. Wiesenfeld was terminated for cause after it was determined that he committed such violations."
The spokesperson added that the office remains committed to enforcing New York’s laws and defending the rights of all New Yorkers, and called any suggestion otherwise “disingenuous.”
Wiesenfeld rejected the idea that he had been a chronic problem employee. He said negative performance feedback arrived only after he voiced frustration with the Trump-related assignment, and that he had received a very positive evaluation before that point.
The fight did not end with his dismissal. In email traffic obtained by The Post under New York’s Freedom of Information law earlier this week, Wiesenfeld pushed back when the office treated certain materials as confidential and privileged and, in his telling, pressed him over them.
"These documents are simply evidence and your threats will not compel me to destroy such evidence. If anything, carrying out your threats by bringing this to a legal forum will make this information public."
He has also said the attorney general’s office threatened him over materials he refused to destroy, a claim detailed in prior reporting on the fired prosecutor’s evidence dispute with James’s team.
James and Trump have been bitter rivals for years. During her 2018 campaign, she vowed to “prosecute the president for crimes committed in New York” if elected.
After taking office she filed a landmark civil fraud lawsuit against Trump, his two oldest sons, and the Trump Organization. A judge ruled for James and awarded $350 million in penalties. The ruling was upheld on appeal, though not with the hefty fine.
That history is why Wiesenfeld’s account lands with force among critics who already see a pattern of selective enforcement. The Trump administration last month called his claims “more proof of the weaponization of the justice system by Letitia James to target President Trump and her political opponents.”
The Post later confirmed that the FBI and the Department of Justice also looked into Wiesenfeld’s allegations. The public record so far does not detail the scope or outcome of those federal reviews.
James continues to draw high-profile assignments and court battles on other fronts, from Gov. Kathy Hochul tapping her in a Cornell sexual assault probe to a federal judge tossing her separate suit against the Trump administration over DOGE.
Separate coverage has also tracked a sweeping public indictment narrative aimed at her office over dereliction claims, including a widely discussed 52-count filing against Letitia James that keeps the accountability fight in view.
Wiesenfeld’s core charge is simpler than the surrounding legal noise. He says line prosecutors found no crime, a bureau chief privately agreed the case should die, and the attorney general still demanded bank subpoenas and continued work because the target was Trump.
Taxpayers fund those hours, those subpoenas, and those headlines. When a prosecutor says the order was to find the crime after picking the name, the public is entitled to the documents, the timeline, and a straight answer about who gave the command.
If the rules of equal justice mean anything, they apply even when the name on the file is the one an ambitious attorney general campaigned to pursue.
