AG Office Whistleblower Uncovers Letitia James Scandal

Sekulow

A whistleblower within New York Attorney General Letitia James' office alleges that senior officials directed prosecutors to target Presiden

Key takeaways

• An assistant attorney general sent an internal email revealing that investigations were being driven by political motives rather than evidence.
• The whistleblower claims the office created 'enemies lists' and pressured staff to find legal grounds to target Trump and his associates.

Main topics

• Political bias in state attorney general offices
• Whistleblower allegations of misconduct in NY AG's office

Notable quotes

"Do as I say, not as I do" – a recurring theme in the contrast between Letitia James' public rhetoric and internal actions.

Conclusion

The episode underscores growing concerns about political manipulation within state legal offices

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:00) Today on Sekulow, a shocking revelation out of Letitia James' office. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever. This is Sekulow. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. Speaker 4 (0:23) And now your host. Welcome to Seculo. Will Haines here. And I want to wish all of you a very happy Labor Day weekend. It is the official end of summer for so many. Many of you already back to school. And many more of you. Looking ahead to a new school year as well. But we are going to talk right now about what's been happening in the New York Attorney General's office. We mentioned in previous broadcast about what has been going on with this whistleblower that came forward and said that the boss at the Investor Protection Bureau in the New York Attorney General's office was pushing attorneys and prosecutors to go after President Trump and go after allies of President Trump. It is very much a case of do as I say, not as I do when it comes to this Attorney General, because she has been one of those people that has been saying, you know, President Trump making an enemies list, going after me. for just following the law. Meanwhile, we know that this has been the M.O. from the Attorney General of New York, Letitia James, who ran on getting President Trump on going after him back in 2018. We know that there was that huge civil case that she brought against him that had to do with, I don't know, her saying that he overvalued properties like Mar-a-Lago and therefore. That was fraudulent because banks gave him loans, etc. Even though the banks testified that they weren't defrauded, paid back these loans, that there was no issue there. Meanwhile, once again, she's the one that there were questions that rose from getting favorable mortgage rates for properties in Norfolk, Virginia and Brooklyn, New York. All that to say, it always seems to be do as I say, not as I do. The ACLJ got directly involved in this by sending a state FOIA request. You hear a FOIA request, it's Freedom of Information Act. That's for the federal government. In New York, it's a FOIA, Freedom of Information Law. We got it within 24 hours of this whistleblower news. We got a FOIA request, FOIA request to the New York Attorney General's office to get information because what happened, a whistleblower said, look, this is what they're doing. They're going after people, not crimes. This isn't how it should work. Don't be Letitia James' personal attorney. And all of a sudden, that email that went to 2,000 people started disappearing from people's inboxes. Even if they've read it, gone. We want to know what happened. This harkens back to what we saw with the IRS scandal with Lois Lerner where emails just disappeared. Or maybe Hillary Clinton, emails disappeared. Private server in the bathroom disappears. Bleach bit became a word and a software that everyone knew because of missing emails. So it always seems to be the emails, but we're going to get to the bottom of this because we knew it was happening, but now people are coming forward and saying it's happening. And that's not the way. the legal system in this country should work. So we're going to cover that in so much more today on Sekulow as we, one, we hope everyone is having a relaxing and wonderful Labor Day weekend. You know, it's also the kickoff of college football. It's a great time of year as we head into the fall. But there's a lot of work going on because, as we always mention, back to school, what does that mean? It means that there's new administrators, new teachers that are going to try and violate the rights of their students. And the ACLJ is there. It means a midterm election coming up. The ACLJ will be here to navigate the issues that are front and center, as well as things like this. Letitia James' office getting a state FOIA request as we try to get to the bottom of what happened to that email. Why did it disappear? They said it was a personnel issue. That sounds like it. So, once again, all of these things are possible because you support the ACLJ. And many of you did in the month of August, which was a wonderful time to see so many people standing with the ACLJ. And we thank you for that. But if you need help, the ACLJ is also here for you. Go to ACLJ.org slash help and an attorney will be in touch with you if you feel like your constitutional rights are being violated. But we'll be back with more on Sekula. Back to Sekula. We're breaking this down for you as a assistant attorney general in the New York attorney general's office, Letitia James. You've heard of her maybe on this broadcast for years as she ran ongoing after President Trump successfully got a verdict in New York court about. a civil case where it was trying to say that he defrauded banks by overvaluing things on paper. Meanwhile, she did that exact thing, but in order to get more favorable mortgage rates when it comes to properties in Norfolk, Virginia, Brooklyn, New York, but nothing to see there. We know that it has been her goal publicly to get the president, but To some degree, you still think, ah, it's political rhetoric. There's no one inside her AG's office actually saying it. You know, you can create that culture without having to actually give those directives. Well, what we're seeing, according to this assistant attorney general, Daniel Weisenfeld, is that he sent a company-wide, and company meaning agency-wide, email on Friday. And said, hey, guess what? Letitia James and my boss here in the Investor Protection Bureau aren't focusing on the right things. They're just saying, get Trump and his allies. They're making political enemies lists and asking for them to find crimes to fit the people. That's Speaker 3 (6:39) right. I mean, when you look at this, you say, we want you to focus your time here. So he laid it out. He said, go after Trump himself. go after Truth Social, go after Hewlett Packard because Trump DOJ approved that merger so we want to look at that too and again they had no credible reason so they just got a list of here's the people or companies that have been associated with President Trump so you've got the social media company you've got a tech company and President Trump himself and the list went on and then not there wasn't any reason given there wasn't like a you know usually when you start these investigations it's because of a reason someone like a whistleblower comes to you from inside a company you're doing the normal kind of due diligence and maybe a different division within the New York government says we believe there's been a tax issue the tax division could bring it to the attorney general's office you know that would be normal courses investigators the police, security services that are looking at financial transactions, all of that and what we see here is a assistant AG saying we didn't get any of that information, we had nothing to start with, it wasn't like hey because Donald Trump did x y and z we would like you to look at a b and c, it was let's see if you could find anything illegal that we could sue Donald Trump over and you know you mentioned the one case they were able to bring over property which again is one that is on hold now as we speak because the president is the president you can't keep those lawsuits have to all stall out while he's president of the United States but this again shows that this is continuing because this is an email that went out on Friday not Friday three years ago but Friday like last week like just you know and this is again a handful of days ago and you know that this assistant AG in New York likely is probably not a huge Trump supporter maybe they are but you know the system inside New York in the attorney general's office especially under Letitia James and these appointees to get to that level would be people that would be vetted people that we brought in because they share the same ideas they're not it's not supposed to be about politics with the attorney general's office but let's get truthful they run as politicians so usually they would share the same political ideas as well that being said that should all be able to be true and you don't make a political enemies list to prosecute and you know President Trump and this DOJ has gotten a lot of flack for investigating former officials who feel who it appeared targeted the Trump administration unlawfully and they're being targeted with the saying oh that is some kind of a list of those we just want to get that's just our political opponents that we want to take down no it was people that they believe were engaged in wrongdoing and they made the FBI and DOJ look bad they've really tarnished the reputation of Department of Justice and the IRS and others we've seen that happen And so you look at the Jim Coeys, you look at what they did, you look at former CIA directors and national security and you decide, you know, marching into the White House without any approval to sit down and talk to, to send FBI agents and to talk to staff that had been there for, you know, 48 hours because you knew they weren't the typical Washington insiders. that would have the stone walls in place for your FBI agents to be stopped at the door. Jim Coby did that. That's worthy of an investigation. It's worth, he admitted to doing it. So why not be able to investigate? If you tweet out and search out what it means to get rid of somebody. Right, Speaker 4 (10:33) 8647. Yeah, Speaker 3 (10:34) right. And you're looking at whether or not I should send that. You can investigate that when you're talking about the President of the United States and that means removing them and that means getting rid of them and a lot of other people would read that as much more of a threat or a call to action as a threat. So those are not investigating political opponents just because you're investigating them for a reason and here I think this Assistant Attorney General will, his issue was not probably that it was Donald Trump or Hewlett Packard, it was that They were just being told by their higher-ups go after these people and that's it. They didn't have a briefing paper of research. They didn't have another agency that gave them hundreds of pages from the FBI that said this is what we found or the New York Bureau of Investigation, the New York Tax Authority. Anything like that to say that we feel like there's been a violation of law for these individuals that were listed or corporations that were listed. That would have probably been a very different, it might not have even been right then, but it would have Speaker 4 (11:37) been Speaker 3 (11:37) very different. This is like the worst of the worst is when you have an assistant AG say, they just gave us political targets to go after. Speaker 4 (11:44) Right, right. Once again, we assumed they were politically targeting people, but not this explicit. The bosses were giving the marching orders. This Speaker 2 (11:54) raw, right? Speaker 4 (11:54) Like this raw, just Speaker 3 (11:55) from your boss. Go see if you can find something. We can bring a lawsuit against Donald Trump personally, against his company, or against any kind of businesses that did work with that Trump administration. Speaker 4 (12:05) Here's what's wild about this as well. Once again, he says in this email, I ask that you not serve as Tisha'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 that harkens back to joseph stalin's chief of his secret police who once said famously show me the man i'll show you the crime right he's saying don't be like joseph stalin's regime here right which is wild but then you get further down into this why is he doing this Once again, when you look at state's attorney's general's office, you think about there were 2,000 people that received this email. There are going to be people, even if it's a run by someone who won the office that you disagree with politically, someone like Letitia James. There are going to be people that believe in the rule of