Letitia James launched a year-long investigation into Donald Trump based on a tip from an unlisted phone number.
Her own team found no crime and her bureau chief privately admitted she would have closed the case if it were up to her.
What James did next is why a whistleblower just refused to destroy evidence and paid for it with his job.
Letitia James Whistleblower Found No Crime After a Year and She Kept Going Anyway
The assignment landed on New York Assistant Attorney General Daniel Wiesenfeld's desk on July 25, 2025.
The text alleged that Donald Trump Jr. and his associates were peddling insider tips to private companies for millions.
Wiesenfeld asked to see the text.
He was told no.
"My boss, Shamiso Maswoswe, told me they could not provide me with more information," he told the New York Post.
Investigators dug in anyway – bank records, subpoenas, the works.
A full year later, they had nothing.
"We affirmatively conclude that no crime had taken place," Wiesenfeld said.
Any legitimate law enforcement office closes the case at that point.
New York Attorney General Leticia James kept going.
When Wiesenfeld pushed back, he was ordered to send subpoenas to several banks – "wasting taxpayer dollars and the banks' resources on what I believed was a fruitless, politically motivated investigation," he said.
Bureau Chief Shamiso Maswoswe privately told Wiesenfeld she agreed with him.
"She agreed with us and that if it were her call, she would close the case – but that it was Tish's call," he told the New York Post.
"Tish was the boss and what Tish wanted, Tish got."
Letitia James Fired Him and Now Wants His Evidence of the Cover-Up Destroyed
By August 2026, Wiesenfeld stopped waiting.
He blasted an email to more than 2,000 colleagues and laid out exactly what he had been ordered to do.
"If you believe Trump is using [DOJ] 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 wrote.
The email vanished from 2,000 inboxes within hours – James's office deleted it from their servers – and Wiesenfeld was placed on administrative leave, then fired.
James's office claims he had performance issues, and Wiesenfeld says that is a lie.
"The negative feedback about my performance came only after I expressed that frustration," he told the Post.
"Before then, I had received a very positive performance evaluation. So, the suggestion that I had simply been a problem employee all along is false."
The FBI and DOJ had already interviewed Wiesenfeld for several hours about his allegations.
Now James's office is threatening him over the documents he kept as evidence.
He refused.
"These documents are simply evidence and your threats will not compel me to destroy such evidence," he wrote back to the AG's office.
"If anything, carrying out your threats by bringing this to a legal forum will make this information public."
James ran for attorney general in 2018 on a single campaign promise – go after Donald Trump.
She got elected, hired staff who despised Trump, and sent investigators after targets based on anonymous tips, never sharing the underlying source material with the people running the case.
When they found zero crime, she kept the investigation alive because that was what Tish wanted.
That is a political vendetta funded by New York taxpayers.
Letitia James Weaponized Her Office the Same Way Kamala Harris Did Before Her
Tish James did not invent this.
Kamala Harris ran the same operation in California – using her AG office to target conservative organizations, pro-life journalists, and charter school companies whose donors backed Republicans.
Former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman ran it in New York before James – going after Exxon on a securities fraud theory so absurd his own case eventually collapsed.
The pattern is the same every time: pick the target first, then go looking for the crime.
National Review and the Manhattan Institute documented this years ago – left-wing AGs treating their offices as political stepping stones and their investigators as opposition research teams.
Wiesenfeld said in that email – if you think it is wrong when Trump does it, you have to say the same thing when Tish does it.
The difference is that Trump's DOJ actually has to find a real crime first.
Now the Trump administration is investigating James herself for civil rights violations committed against the president.
What Tish wanted, Tish got.
Sources:
- Reuven Fenton and Jorge Fitz-Gibbon, "Ex-NY prosecutor claims AG Letitia James pushed Trump probe despite investigators finding nothing," New York Post, October 8, 2026.
- "Whistleblower In Letitia James' Office Says He Was Ordered To Target Trump," The Federalist, September 1, 2026.
- "Federal investigators interviewed Letitia James whistleblower who said she ordered staff to target 'Trump himself'," Washington Examiner, September 2, 2026.
- "Left-Wing AGs Are Playing Politics with the Law," National Review / Manhattan Institute, September 2016.
