A senior lawyer at the New York Attorney General’s Office claims he was fired after trying to expose misconduct by a chief prosecutor — who he alleges has hidden potential conflicts of interest and controversial professional relationships
John Oleske claims he spent two years flagging concerns to his bosses about chief prosecutor José Maldonado — allegations his employer dismissed as a personal vendetta before firing him this past October, the Daily Beast reported.
The senior lawyer’s charges have largely been dismissed by his former colleagues as well.
Two staffers said Oleske’s concerns were simply a “personal vendetta,” while a third criticized the 74-page report he wrote on Maldonado’s alleged misconduct and dismissed it as a “manifesto,” the report said.
As a result, Oleske, who previously led trial teams that won some of the AG’s biggest cases, has turned into an unlikely whistleblower aiming at Maldonado, who currently serves as the chief of the office’s powerful criminal division, according to the Daily Beast.
While Oleske did not report to Maldonado, he became frustrated with how he ran his division and discovered what his report dubbed “apparently serious misconduct” due to “falsifying his resume and hiding conflicts of interest with OAG’s enforcement targets,” the report said.
A spokesperson for AG Letitia James’ office said it did not ignore Oleske’s report and “takes every complaint seriously and has always taken appropriate action when warranted.”
In his report, Oleske highlighted allegations against Maldonado that hadn’t yet been publicized, including that in 2020 when he was accused of racism in an ongoing federal discrimination lawsuit in Manhattan.
John Coombs, the past president of the city’s Black Firefighters Association, claimed that when Maldonado served as associate commissioner of compliance at the New York Fire Department he took actions that “blocked the advancement of African Americans.”
The AG’s office dismissed the allegation, telling the Daily Beast it was an unverified and unspecific claim meant to support the certification of a class action lawsuit that a judge refused to give class-action status.
Another complaint of Oleske’s was that Maldonado seemed to hide his prior involvement with a nonprofit called the Brooklyn Golf Alliance, which Oleske felt could become an issue if Maldonado ever had to investigate the organization.
Maldonado quit the group in 2022 when he was caught failing to disclose his involvement, the AG’s office said.
His involvement with the group also concerned Oleske because the AG probes abusive property owners and the golf nonprofit’s board includes Jeffrey Dunston, head of Northeast Brooklyn Housing Development Corporation who was dubbed the “second-worst” private landlord in New York.
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In response to that claim, the AG’s office said that it regularly targets bad landlords — but an employee’s association with someone doesn’t indicate wrongdoing.
The chief prosecutor’s tangential relations to Donald Trump also alarmed Oleske, who noted in his report he was worried Maldonado could somehow influence the office’s early inquiry into the former president, the report said.
Oleske voiced concerns over Maldonado’s covert involvement in lobbying for private garbage companies, though the AG’s office insisted he did this work as an outside adviser.
The former senior lawyer says that after he flagged his concerns internally he was told he was “observed to have engaged in a pattern of erratic, agitated, irrational, and disruptive behavior” and forced to take an extended leave.
After burning through all his PTO, Oleske returned to the office where everyone acted as if nothing happened.
“My first thought was: I must have been right about José being crooked. They’re trying to get rid of me under this threat that they’ll say I’m crazy. This is Soviet-style, sick kind of s—t,” he told the Daily Beast.
Half an hour before he was fired, Oleske emailed over a dozen AG colleagues his report and accused the office of “trying to intimidate and extort me into silence rather than addressing and resolving the problem inherent in Mr. Maldonado’s false statements about his work history and business relationships.”
A week later when he was asked to mail back his work ID and laptop, he told them he had given both to the feds, the Daily Beast reported.
“I have already surrendered all OAG property in my possession to Eric Blachman, Special Agent in Charge of the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Contact him directly with any further inquiries,” he shot back. “DO NOT CONTACT ME AGAIN.”
On Sunday, James made it clear it stood behind its top prosecutor, telling the outlet, “Jose Maldonado is an incredible public servant who has dedicated his career to protecting New Yorkers and fighting for justice.”
“As Chief Deputy Attorney General of the Criminal Division for the past five years, Jose has overseen some of our most impactful work protecting New Yorkers, including our nursing home investigations,” James said. “He has always conducted himself with the utmost integrity and care, and I’m confident he will continue this great work for years to come.”