By Frank Parlato
Angel S. DuBose says she went to a Christmas party and ended up drugged, kidnapped, assaulted, and dumped like garbage—by her own boss and her staff.
That boss? Letitia James.
This wasn’t in some abandoned warehouse. This was a city office Christmas party for the Public Advocate of New York City. James was then the Public Advocate.
Angel Dubose was part of the team, serving as an outreach coordinator in the office and earning $35,000 per year.
She came to the party like anyone else. But she says she didn’t leave the way she came.
The alleged incident, she says, occurred eleven years ago—December 22, 2014—before James was elected New York State Attorney General in 2018.
DuBose Claims Assault Occurred at Woodrow’s in Manhattan
It was at Woodrow’s Bar and Grill in Manhattan; DuBose said she was drugged.
Outside its door, she was transported, not by rebels or terrorists, but allegedly by an elected official and city employees.
Then, at a nearby apartment, she said, as many as a dozen individuals sexually assaulted her in a bizarre and creepy sex cult-style ritual. She remembers a grotesque ceremony of power and cruelty, with a priestess leading the chant and the others repeating.
DuBose claims she was later abandoned unconscious on the streets of New York.
DuBose began reporting the alleged kidnapping and assault the next day.
A Cab Ride Home?
Following the alleged assault, DuBose states that James’s staff attempted to convince her the incident had not occurred. That her mind had invented it. Like a bedtime story with monsters and men in suits. She was drunk, they said, and James’s assistant, Sarah Venezuela, put her in a cab to take her home.
However, DuBose was found on the street far from her home. There is a record of that. DuBose (not Venezuela) hailed the cab that took her home – after she woke up dazed in the sleet. There is a record of that.
DuBose said she wasn’t drunk. She was drugged.
Letitia James’s staff told others that DuBose had PTSD because of her mother’s recent passing. They did not conduct thorough research. Her mother had died 37 years earlier.
It may have been a masterclass in gaslighting.
Or, maybe, as Letitia James says, it didn’t happen.
Relentless Retelling of the Story From Day One to Year 11.
But Angel DuBose never let it go. She has told her story again and again over the years across various offices and administrations.
Most people would have shut up and moved on. She kept going. In 2017—more than two and a half years after the alleged kidnapping and assault—the New York Post reported on DuBose’s claims, reported as a “she said, she said” dispute.
Here is a PDF of the original NY Post story that was later removed.
DuBose named James’s then–Chief of Staff, Ibrahim Khan, as the person who drugged her. He slipped something in the drink he bought for her, she said. His hand strangely hovering over the glass.
DuBose claims Ibrahim Khan put drugs in her drink after summoning her to meet him at the end of the bar.
James Calls DuBose’s Story a Lie; Post Removes Story
James’s then spokesperson, Anna Brower, told the Post, “There is absolutely no truth to these allegations. They are an outright lie.”
The Post kept the story online for five years before quietly removing it, offering no explanation. No correction. No update. The Post posted, then un-posted.
It was 2022. The Post story vanished precisely when The New York Times reported that two other women brought sexual misconduct claims against James’s Chief of Staff, Khan, the man who DuBose claimed had drugged her.
The Times further reported that James had known about the women’s accusations and covered it up just long enough to win reelection.
The NY Post helped James out by burying a third accuser – the first one to come forward – Angel DuBose -by quietly taking her story offline. Maybe they didn’t mean to help James. It could be a coincidence.
Present Efforts
It is now 2025.
DuBose keeps telling the same story she said eleven years ago. Public interest is growing.
Following the publication of my first report, which was amplified on social media by Donald J. Trump, I released a second story that also went viral.
A number of media influencers have carried the narrative across YouTube and other platforms.
DuBose has also launched a GoFundMe campaign to fund legal action, public advocacy, and continued investigation. A documentary filmmaker is reportedly interested in covering her story.
Following recent reports of James’s alleged mortgage fraud, uncovered by investigative reporter Sam Antar, the moment may be ripe for investigating DuBose’s claims.
Until lately, all we had was a vanished NY Post story wherein James’s spokesperson, Brower, said nobody failed to investigate and nobody covered it up.
She told the New York Post in 2017:
“When these allegations were raised, we referred them to the Department of Investigation (DOI), which reviewed and closed the matter.”
Brower did not serve on James’s staff at the time. She might not be aware that senior members of James’s team—Deputy Chief of Staff Laura Acosta and Legal Counsel Jennifer Levy—submitted a version of Angel DuBose’s EEO complaint to the Department of Investigation that they altered.
Acosta and Levy, who worked for James, rewrote DuBose’s complaint. It erased what DuBose said happened.
Imagine writing a cry for help, and someone else hits “send” for you—but they change all the words first.
Brower wasn’t in the room. Maybe she’s has no idea the original story never made it past the shredder.
This publication has obtained the original 4-page EEO complaint filed by Angel DuBose, as well as the one-and-a-half-page version later submitted by senior aides to the DOI.
The documents differ radically. The discrepancies raise a question: Why did James’s staff alter DuBose’s complaint, resulting in a DOI investigation that was open and closed in four business days?
There were two complaints. DuBose wrote the first one within two weeks after the assault. It’s powerful, detailed, and painful.
And another—submitted by James’s top aides—altered, softened, rewritten.
We can finally ask what should have been asked all along: Why would anyone change a woman’s cry for help?
Manhattan DA Gets the Case
Brower, in her defense of Letitia James, cited the role of then-Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance in reviewing and ultimately declining to pursue DuBose’s allegations.
Brower said, “The Manhattan DA’s office investigated and also closed it.”
On April 10, 2017, the NYPD referred DuBose to the Special Victims Unit and the Manhattan DA’s Office. Vance assigned Assistant District Attorney Shannon Lucey to handle the matter.
DuBose said she told ADA Lucey that two men – whom she knew as coworkers and who were at the party – had forcibly placed her into the backseat of Letitia James’s black Lincoln Town Car, where James was seated.
James asked, “Is she out?” Referring, DuBose believes, to whether DuBose was unconscious from the drugs.
ADA Lucey took her statement – and noted she mentioned James.
DuBose says that ADA Lucey later removed James’s name. The investigation proceeded based on a revised statement – of an unidentified woman: “I heard a woman’s voice while I was in the Public Advocate’s black car. She said, ‘Is she out?’”
Like the NY Post story, Letitia James’s name vanished from the official inquiry.
She Didn’t Say ‘No!”
In mid-June 2017, DuBose said ADA Lucey informed her that no investigation would proceed.
The Manhattan DA conducted no interviews of any of more than a dozen people DuBose had identified, including Ibrahim Khan, then Chief of Staff to James, whom DuBose accused of drugging her and who would later be accused by two other women.
According to DuBose, the District Attorney’s office explained their rationale for dropping the case. It was what DuBose had told them—or, rather, what she did not tell them.
She had told them she had been drugged, kidnapped, and sexually assaulted in a semi-conscious state. She named the people who did it.
What she did not tell them, prosecutors concluded, was the word “stop.” DuBose had not protested. She had not said, “stop.”
Even as she lay there, drugged and drifting, she didn’t say but one word. Stop.
She was half-awake. Half-alive. But not half-loud enough. That’s what DuBose said they told her at the DA’s office.
Her alleged pain, her terror, her story—meant nothing. Because in her semi-conscious state, she failed to say “Stop.” Not that she consented. Not that there was evidence that she agreed. Just that she didn’t speak.
Anna Brower used this decision not to pursue the case against Letitia James by the Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance as evidence that DuBose was lying.
Ironically, about a year after declining to prosecute the case, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance faced public criticism for not acting in the Harvey Weinstein matter.
Despite growing backlash, then–Public Advocate Letitia James, who was always saying she believed women, offered a defense of the man:
“I support Cy Vance, I will endorse Cy Vance for reelection, and I don’t understand the controversy.”
James Says DuBose “Disparaged” Her
A year earlier, James’s spokesperson, Brower, said of DuBose: “We are disappointed that a former employee would go through such great lengths to disparage the Public Advocate’s Office and our team.”
It is disparagement if DuBose’s allegations are false.
If they are true, then consider the great lengths to which James and her team took to disparage DuBose.
Of course, James may be innocent. Perhaps DuBose has spent more than a decade orchestrating a calculated falsehood.
Maybe none of it happened.
It may boil down to this: Either Angel DuBose is lying, or Letitia James is a kidnapper. And Angel DuBose has spent 11 years telling the most dangerous truth of her life.
Yes, if true, it is kidnapping. A class A 1 felony —exempt from the statute of limitations under state and federal law.
But happily, this is a case that can be cracked. That is good news for Letitia James if DuBose is lying.
The proof can be determined. It could always be determined if anyone ever cared to investigate.
Too Many to Hide a Secret
Benjamin Franklin said: “Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.”
DuBose named more than a dozen individuals within Letitia James’s circle who, DuBose claims, possess knowledge of what happened to her on December 22, 2014.
Some were allegedly present during the kidnapping and drugging. Others during the assault. Others participated in the intimidation, silencing tactics, and psychological manipulation- allegedly.
DuBose has named them.
A few have since left James’s orbit.
Now that this is gaining traction—11 years after the alleged incident—a thorough investigation is warranted.
If Letitia James is innocent, she should stop calling DuBose a liar and welcome the investigation.
If it happened, more than a dozen people are not going to lie – not when lying could get them charged. And telling the truth could get them immunity.
On the other hand, not one of the dozen is going to make up a story that never happened.
That’s where truth gets the edge.
Letitia James should embrace an investigation – and cooperate with it if innocent.
If she is guilty- she should continue, as she has done, and have her spokeswoman call DuBose a liar and tell the public that it has already been investigated.
A New Investigation?
Any new investigation should not be conducted by her office, the DOI, or the Manhattan DA, as they are rightfully part of the investigation.
In the meantime, as an investigative reporter, I will do precisely what the US Constitution expects of the free press.
I will report on it. Next up: a report on what DuBose said happened at the Christmas Party at Woodrow’s on December 22, 2014; what happened afterward just outside the door, her drive with James, and her involuntary role in an apparent esoteric ritual sex offering.
I will also examine DuBose’s visit to the hospital the next day for a rape kit, for which there is documentary evidence, and how James’s inner circle handled (or mishandled) DuBose in the days following her return to work on December 24, 2014 – to a job she desperately needed to keep or face literal homelessness for her and her two daughters.
These reports of mine should not be construed as an attack on Letitia James. Quite the opposite, it will help her if she is innocent.
James’s slogan is ‘No one is above the law’—not governors, not presidents, not even attorneys general.
James will welcome this— if she does not think she is above the law and has not broken it.
We can put this to rest once and for all. That is far better than changing EEO reports, having an ally tell a woman that she did not say “No” loud enough while drugged, or telling her that her staff member got her a cab when evidence shows that was a lie, or even making online stories disappear.
The FBI Under Competent Leadership Might Be Appropriate
As for law enforcement participation, there are two men of genius that I know of who could honestly and with impeccable integrity oversee a criminal investigation: Dan Bongino and Kashyap Patel. Deputy Director and Director of the FBI, respectively.
It squarely comes under federal jurisdiction.
In fact, the US Attorney General Pam Bondi has already announced that the FBI is investigating James on suspicion of mortgage fraud.
While the FBI has its own reputational issues (pre-Patel) of coverups and weaponization, no amount of political pressure could ever persuade men like Patel or Bongino to charge an innocent person or to bury guilt.
To be continued…
Recent YouTube videos covering the story
Hannibal is Hungry Interview with DuBose
