Updated

The lawyer for the maid who says the former head of the IMF sexually assaulted her wrote a strongly-worded letter to the Manhattan district attorney, criticizing his office’s handling of the case and asking that the office recuse itself from the case and appoint a special prosecutor.

Citing “the interest of justice,” lawyer Kenneth P. Thompson wrote that the “people have the right to a fair and impartial prosecution of such an important case.”

“Your office, unfortunately, has demonstrated that it is incapable of meeting these standards, and must therefore immediately recuse itself from the case," Thompson wrote.

Thompson alleges that it was District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr.’s office that released “damaging leaks to the media that were intended to discredit the victim’s character” and undermine the charges against Dominque Strauss-Kahn.

He appeared to focus a lot of attention on the leak of the alleged phone conversation his client had with an inmate a day after the alleged assault where she supposedly spoke about Strauss-Kahn's money.

Thompson wrote that the leak undermined the veracity of his client and was an “abrogation of the duties of a prosecutor." Thompson does not name the prosecutor, but mentions prosecutor Daniel R. Alonso throughout the letter and compares phrases Alonso told him, to phrases that appeared in a New York Times article that cited “two well-placed law enforcement officials."

Thompson wrote that his team was denied access to the recording of the purported conversation.

Criticism did not end at media leaks. Thompson wrote that he learned in a Times article that a high-ranking prosecutor at the district attorney's office is married to an attorney representing Strauss-Kahn. He also wrote that at one point his client was screamed at by a prosecutor.

The District Attorney’s Office said it received the letter "purportedly" from Thompson from reporters and swiftly rebuked it.

“We strongly disagree with how the Office and the work of the Assistant District Attorneys have been characterized,” the statement read, “Any suggestion that this Office should be recused is wholly without merit."

Earlier Wednesday, lawyers for Strauss-Kahn met with prosecutors for what the defense called a productive discussion, but there was no immediate word on what would happen to the sexual assault case that has been threatened by doubts about the accuser's credibility.

After the case developed, the maid acknowledged she had lied to prosecutors about being gang-raped in Guinea and had not given a grand jury an accurate account of what she did immediately after the alleged attack. She initially described running into a hall and waiting until a supervisor arrived. Prosecutors now say she went on cleaning rooms before reporting the matter to a supervisor.

They said they also found she had cheated on taxes, including claiming someone else's child as her own.

Thompson has said she's made mistakes in her life but is not involved in drug dealing and is telling the truth about her encounter with Strauss-Kahn.

FoxNews.com’s Jana Winter and the Associated Press contributed to this report.