Letitia James’ abuses of power laid bare as top prosecutor blows the whistle
New York Assistant Attorney General Daniel Wiesenfeld may be Whistleblower of the Year: He just called out Attorney General Tish James’ horrific abuses of power in burning “significant public taxpayer dollars to target convenient public enemies,” not least President Donald Trump, with no cause.
The office should focus on prosecuting “rampant nonprofit homeless shelter fraud and antisemitic crimes in and around synagogues,” he thundered in a weekend email blasted to 2,000 staff in the state AG’s office.
His first-hand knowledge doesn’t directly implicate James: He alleges only that his direct superior, Investor Protection Bureau Chief Shamiso Maswoswe, told him to target “Trump himself, Truth Social, Hewlett Packard (DOJ approved merger)” without bothering to first find “a credible reason for targeting the organizations and individuals.”
But he (understandably) believes Maswoswe was following orders from James, who after all ran for the office vowing to target Trump.
The AG’s office of course denies everything, immediately put Wiesenfeld on leave and no doubt will seek to crucify him.
After all, this is highly credible testimony that could easily be the final nail in tossing James’ civil-case victory over Trump and quite possibly cost her this fall’s election — and even, should investigators find enough other testimony or hard evidence, put her in serious criminal jeopardy.
James’ failures and abuses have long been obvious to us, including her stunning failure to target tens of billions in Medicaid fraud; plenty of other elected Democrats know she’s been a disaster though they don’t dare say so.
Her GOP challenger, Saritha Komatireddy, has been landing blow after blow in the runup to November’s election — flagging other James outrages such as wasting $20 million or more to hire outside lawyers to do work that those 2,000 staffers can surely handle and sending at least $54 million in taxpayer funds to criminal-friendly nonprofits.
James had proved herself a rancid political hack before Wiesenfeld blew the whistle; Komatiredy herself is a straight-arrow career prosecutor promoted to high office by then-President Barack Obama, recognized with multiple US Attorney General’s Awards as she sent terrorists and drug lords off to prison.
Tish James prefers to prosecute cops and her political enemies; let’s hope she’s soon out of government, if not in prison.