Former Cuomo adviser Richard Azzopardi branded Attorney General Letitia James the biggest hypocrite in Albany after her office released personnel records on a whistleblower who claimed she targeted President Trump.
The New York Post reported that Azzopardi, a senior adviser and communications director during Andrew Cuomo’s time as governor, tore into James for dumping internal files on Daniel Wiesenfeld, a prosecutor who accused her office of pressing a case against Trump.
Azzopardi tied the release straight to the playbook James once condemned. Five years earlier, her investigative team hammered Cuomo’s Executive Chamber for sending confidential personnel files on Lindsey Boylan, the first of several women to accuse the governor of sexual harassment, to reporters.
James is a Democrat seeking a third term. She faces Republican former federal prosecutor Saritha Komatireddy. The fight over Wiesenfeld’s records now puts her own standard on public display.
Azzopardi did not say much about the parallel.
He told the Post:
"AG James is probably the biggest hypocrite in Albany, and that’s a contest,"
He added:
"It’s galling that she’s doing the same thing and is expecting everyone to look the other way."
Azzopardi had been accused of retaliation by James’s team for the Boylan release. He testified that legal counsel cleared it. James’s report still found the result unlawful.
He framed the Wiesenfeld dump the same way:
"If what I did was retaliation, what is this? There’s no daylight between these two situations."
Boylan tweeted in December 2020 that Cuomo “sexually harassed” her over her looks. Azzopardi then sent several reporters confidential files detailing workplace complaints against her, plus a formal statement denying the allegations. James’s report later concluded Cuomo engaged in sexual misconduct and that the Executive Chamber’s release of those confidential files constituted unlawful retaliation. The report helped force Cuomo’s 2021 resignation. He continues to deny wrongdoing.
James’s own report warned about the effect on future complainants.
It stated:
"These actions also sent a chilling message to other would be complainants,"
And:
"Regardless of the involvement of counsel, we find that the result of the Executive Chamber’s release of the Confidential Files related to Ms. Boylan constituted unlawful retaliation,"
Now the same office has put a whistleblower’s personnel trail into public view under New York’s Freedom of Information Law, the state open-records statute known as FOIL.
Wiesenfeld worked as a prosecutor in the Investor Protection Bureau. The attorney general’s office first hired him in 2024. In August he blasted an email to more than 2,000 colleagues claiming he was forced to investigate Trump, Trump’s family, and Trump’s associates.
He later told the Post he was ordered to keep pursuing an insider-trading case against Trump even though evidence was lacking. He said the direction ran to the top of the office.
Wiesenfeld put it this way:
"Tish was the boss and what Tish wanted, Tish got. So we had to keep going."
President Trump shared the Post’s exclusive interview with Wiesenfeld. Records obtained last week through FOIL by the Times Union, and email copies obtained by the Post under the same law, showed Wiesenfeld had been “counseled” for performance issues that included failing to participate in meetings or answer to supervisors.
A June performance review had painted a different picture. It called him “hardworking, reliable (and) takes ownership of his cases” and noted a “good attitude.”
After the August email blast, the conflict with his bosses hardened. On Sept. 4, Jenna Moran, the attorney general’s human resources director, sent a termination letter. It said the agency knew he had emailed privileged and/or confidential OAG work information to his personal email account and ordered him to destroy or return those emails and any records derived from them immediately.
Wiesenfeld refused the destruction demand. He denied the materials were confidential and privileged as the office claimed.
In the email exchange obtained by the Post he wrote:
"These documents are simply evidence and your threats will not compel me to destroy such evidence. If anything, carrying out your threats by bringing this to a legal forum will make this information public."
He also claimed he was being threatened for refusing to delete evidence of alleged corruption inside the office.
A spokesperson for James rejected any suggestion the office bent the rules for politics.
The spokesperson said:
"The Office of the Attorney General is duty bound to take disciplinary action when one of its attorneys violates the law, the New York Rules of Professional Conduct, or agency policy. Mr. Wiesenfeld was terminated for cause after it was determined that he committed such violations."
The same spokesperson added:
"We remain committed to enforcing New York’s laws and defending the rights of all New Yorkers. Any suggestion otherwise is disingenuous."
The office said the personnel files went to the media in accordance with state FOIL. It also said a review of Wiesenfeld’s claim that the office was pushing another Trump probe found the allegation unsubstantiated, and that Wiesenfeld did not participate in that probe.
That official account sits beside the earlier James report language on Boylan. Then, releasing confidential personnel material on an accuser was branded unlawful retaliation that chilled other complainants. Now the office calls the Wiesenfeld release lawful open-records compliance and the firing a clean disciplinary case.
Azzopardi’s charge is that Albany’s standard flipped when the target changed. James’s team once treated the dump of Boylan’s files as a serious abuse by Cuomo’s chamber. The same office now stands behind the release of Wiesenfeld’s performance counseling notes, internal emails, and termination paper trail after he went public with claims about pressure on a Trump-related matter.
Wiesenfeld’s June review praised ownership and attitude. By late summer he was at odds with supervisors, emailing thousands of colleagues, refusing an order to destroy records he called evidence, and then out of a job. The FOIL releases put that arc in public view. James’s defenders call it accountability for a lawyer who broke office rules. Her critics call it the same personnel-file weapon she once denounced.
Voters will decide whether the two episodes look the same. James wants another term. The record she helped write on retaliation is now being read back to her.
In Albany, the rules on personnel files appear to tighten or loosen depending on whose ox is gored, and conservatives will keep measuring James by the standard she set for everyone else.
