Fired Letitia James Prosecutor: Probe Tied to Trump Jr. Found No Crime, but ‘What Tish Wanted, Tish Got’

A former prosecutor in New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office says investigators concluded there was no crime in an insider-trading probe tied to Donald Trump Jr., and that the case was kept alive anyway because James wanted it. “Tish was the boss and what Tish wanted, Tish got,” Daniel Wiesenfeld told the New York Post. “So we had to keep it going.”

On Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026, President Trump pushed the Post’s story out to his roughly 13 million Truth Social followers, adding two words: “Prosecutorial Misconduct!” James’s office says Wiesenfeld was fired for cause. He calls himself a whistleblower. Here is what each side has said, and what is on the record.

A tip, a “cryptic text” and no crime

Wiesenfeld was an assistant attorney general in the office’s Investor Protection Bureau. According to his account, reported by the Post and summarized by Newsmax, he was assigned the case on July 25, 2025, after an anonymous tip alleged that Trump Jr. and associates were selling insider information to private companies for millions of dollars.

The tip, he says, rested on a “cryptic text” that investigators could never substantiate. His team’s conclusion was unambiguous: “We affirmatively conclude that no crime had taken place.” Despite his objections, he says, he was ordered to subpoena several banks.

By his telling, frustration built through the spring. “By June 2026, after several meetings, we had become exasperated,” he said. He says his bureau chief, Shamiso Maswoswe, agreed the case should be closed but told him “that it was Tish’s call.” And so, he says, the investigation kept going after the evidence ran out.

To be clear about what this case is and is not: Wiesenfeld’s account concerns a separate insider-trading inquiry, not James’s civil fraud lawsuit against Trump and the Trump Organization. That case had its own reversal. In August 2025, a divided New York appeals court threw out the financial penalty in that case, which had grown to more than half a billion dollars with interest, calling it excessive, while leaving the underlying fraud finding in place. James appealed to the state’s highest court.

The email the office deleted

Wiesenfeld first went public on Aug. 28, 2026, with an email to more than 2,000 colleagues across the attorney general’s office, first reported by the Albany Times Union. In it, he wrote that he had been directed “to find and pursue crimes committed by specific individuals and organizations affiliated with Donald Trump,” and to target “Trump himself, Truth Social, Hewlett Packard (DOJ approved merger)” “without having a credible reason for targeting the organizations and individuals,” as Jonathan Turley quoted the email.

He made the comparison that has made the email famous: “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.” And he closed with a plea: “I ask that you not serve as Tish’s personal attorneys by targeting her political enemies.”

According to the Times Union, the email was quickly deleted from the office’s servers and from employees’ inboxes. The office’s general counsel, Kumiki Gibson, followed up with an email to staff describing the matter as internal, Fox News reported. A spokesperson said: “This is a personnel matter,” adding that the office is committed to upholding the law regardless of political beliefs and “strongly reject[s] any assertion to the contrary.”

Leave, firing and federal interest

Wiesenfeld was placed on paid administrative leave and, according to Newsmax, fired on Sept. 5. On Sept. 1, the Washington Examiner reported, citing a source familiar with the interview, he spent several hours with criminal and civil attorneys from the FBI and the Justice Department, alleging that staff were directed to “target President Donald Trump and his associates.” Whether federal investigators have opened a formal investigation has not been made public.

The dispute has since escalated. Wiesenfeld says the office sent him a Sept. 18 letter threatening “professional discipline, as well as civil and/or criminal action” over office materials he has refused to return or destroy. “These documents are simply evidence,” he wrote back. The Times Union reported that a business card from a detective on the attorney general’s Executive Protection Detail was left jammed in his front door.

James’s side

James’s office says Wiesenfeld was dismissed for cause for violating the law, professional conduct rules or agency policy, and that its own review did not substantiate his allegations, a review he declined to take part in. Personnel records cited by Newsmax show he had been counseled about performance problems before the email, including missed meetings and failures to respond to supervisors and advance cases. At a debate with her Republican challenger, Saritha Komatireddy, James said of the email, according to Newsmax: “It undermined the work that we were doing.”

Those are serious counterpoints, and readers should weigh them. But notice what the office’s response does not do. It attacks the messenger’s job performance. It does not explain why a probe its own investigator says found no crime needed bank subpoenas, or who decided to keep it open after the bureau chief agreed it should close. Those are the questions the office has not answered in public.

When a prosecutor says the evidence ran out and the case kept going because the boss wanted it, that isn’t law enforcement; it’s a vendetta with a subpoena.

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