A veteran prosecutor in New York Attorney General Letitia James' office says he was ordered to find crimes to pin on people connected to President Donald Trump, and the fallout left him on paid leave within days.

Daniel Wiesenfeld, a former Brooklyn prosecutor who moved into James' Investor Protection Bureau, sent an email to roughly 2,000 colleagues on Friday laying out what he says happened inside the office. The email disappeared from inboxes not long after it went out, but the Times-Union obtained a copy before it was deleted.

Wiesenfeld wrote that Bureau Chief Shamiso Maswoswe directed him to build cases against "Trump himself, Truth Social, Hewlett Packard (DOJ approved merger)... without having a credible reason for targeting this organizations and individuals [sic]."

The Hewlett Packard matter goes back to a $14 billion merger between Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks that the federal government approved. Wiesenfeld says his bureau chief wanted him to dig into a transaction that Washington had cleared. In his account, the office picked the target based on who stood to benefit rather than the merits of any case.

Wiesenfeld drew the comparison James' office would rather nobody draw. He wrote in the email, "If you believe Trump is using the [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 asked his colleagues to reconsider their role, writing, "I ask you 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."

Wiesenfeld pointed his colleagues toward work he considers worth the office's time, urging them to focus on "rampant nonprofit homeless shelter fraud and antisemitic crimes in and around synagogues" instead of chasing James' political enemies. He accused her of burning "significant public taxpayer dollars to target convenient public enemies."

The office placed Wiesenfeld on paid administrative leave once the email surfaced. A spokesperson for James dismissed the episode as "a personnel matter" in a statement to the Times-Union.

James' office issued a broader denial too, calling itself "committed to upholding New York's laws and protecting the rights and freedoms of all New Yorkers, regardless of political beliefs," and adding, "We strongly reject any assertion to the contrary."

However, this denial conflicts with James' own actions. In December 2018, a month after she was elected attorney general, she promised to 'prosecute the president for crimes committed in New York State.' After she took office, she certainly carried out that promise. In 2024, her office obtained a $364 million civil fraud judgment against Trump, his sons, and his company, on the grounds that he had inflated the values of his properties and misrepresented his wealth to obtain loans from Deutsche Bank. During the trial, David Williams, Deutsche Bank's own managing director, testified in Trump's defense, undermining James' assertion that Trump had defrauded the bank. The appeals court confirmed the original verdict but canceled the huge financial penalty.

For Republicans in the state, Wiesenfeld's email was confirmation of what they have argued for years.

"Letitia James weaponized the attorney general's office into a political hit squad and then tried to cover up her tracks. She is utterly unfit to serve." New York State Republican Committee Chairman Ed Cox told the New York Post. "New Yorkers deserve an attorney general who prosecutes criminals, preserves public records and enforces the law without fear or favor."

Nicole Kiprilov, spokesperson for Republican attorney general candidate Saritha Komatireddy, said, "When Saritha is attorney general, she will instruct her attorneys to lock up repeat offenders, build residential treatment for the homeless, and root out fraud - not target people because of their politics." She added, "It's good to see that even the rank-and-file in the AG's office agree that this is the right way forward. Let's work together - across partisan lines - and create a safer, more affordable New York."

Komatireddy built her resume for exactly this argument, spending years in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn as chief of International Narcotics and Money Laundering, deputy chief of Appeals, and deputy chief of General Crimes. She also clerked for then-Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Court of Appeals.

But what's really telling is that even James' fellow Democrats aren't rushing to her defense.

Melissa DeRosa, a former aide to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, wrote on X that James "has been abusing her office for political gain for years." DeRosa followed with a line that cuts both ways, writing, "Don't criticize Trump's use of DOJ if you're not going to call out hers -/ it's wrong when either side does it."