Cuomo tweets about COVID but ignores calls to resign over damning AG report

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Governor Andrew Cuomo stuck his head in the sand on Wednesday, ignoring the mounting calls for him to resign or face criminal charges for sexually assaulting female staff and three looming criminal investigations.  

Cuomo was found to have sexually harassed at least 11 women, including Bennett, by a team of investigators put together by Attorney General Letitia James. She does not have the legal scope to charge him criminally, but the Albany District Attorney said he has launched an investigation and is inviting women to come forward. 

Everyone from NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio to President Joe Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi – some of Cuomo’s most trusted Democratic allies – is telling him it’s time to resign but he is clinging on, insisting he’s the victim of a politicized attack by James and that his accusers either lied about him or misinterpreted his ‘warmth’ for sexual predatoriness.

The District Attorneys of Manhattan, Albany and Westchester have now all opened criminal investigations into Cuomo’s conduct. 

Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance, the most recent to launch an investigation, said: ‘When our office learned yesterday that the Attorney General’s investigation of the Governor’s conduct was complete, our office contacted the Attorney General’s Office to begin requesting investigative materials in their possession pertaining to incidents that occurred in Manhattan.’  

The Manhattan DA is investigation the allegation of State Trooper #1 who says Cuomo ran his finger down her back inappropriately in an elevator and State Entity Employee #1, who said he tapped her buttocks twice at an NYC event.

The Albany DA is investigating any allegation of misconduct in Cuomo’s office at the Governor’s Mansion or in the State Capitol.  

The Westchester DA asked the AG’s office for more information on State Trooper #1’s claims and any other alleged incident that happened in Westchester County. 

On Wednesday, de Blasio said he ought to be criminally charged with assault for allegedly groping the breast of an executive assistant in November 2020. He says it never happened, the AG says that it did. 

Cuomo’s office on Wednesday sent out several press releases on governmental issues but ignored the elephant in the room, instead only pushing out statements about COVID and vaccines.  

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, who would oversee impeachment proceedings in the New York legislature, released a statement on Wednesday confirming that an impeachment investigation was underway and that it would conclude ‘expeditiously’ but impeachment articles are yet to be drawn up.   

First, the Assembly Judiciary Committee needs to give the findings of its investigation to the  New York Assembly. The committee’s next meeting is on Monday. 

The next step would be an impeachment trial in the Assembly. 

A simple majority is needed for it to proceed to the High Court of Impeachment which would consist of all 63 New York State Senators and seven judges from New York’s Court of Appeals. 

In the event that all both the Assembly and the High Court of Impeachment vote to remove him,  Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul would take over and serve out Cuomo’s term which ends in November 2022.   

On Good Morning America on Wednesday, Bennett – who worked as an aide for Cuomo in 2019 – said his ‘apology’ to her that was televised yesterday was ‘not much of an apology at all’. 

She and her attorney are calling on the New York State Legislature – which is on summer break – to be reconvened to start impeachment proceedings against him, saying it’s ‘clear’ he won’t go quietly and must be removed from office. 

‘Based on his apology which was not much of an apology at all, he’s not living in reality. It’s up to us to take action. It is the responsibility of Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie  to impeach him immediately. He is a danger,’ Bennett said. 

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio appeared on CBS to say Cuomo must resign before he is impeached and that he thinks he should face criminal charges.  

He dismissed Cuomo’s claim that his behavior is of a certain generation and said: ‘He has the audacity to say, “oh, you know, I like to hug people.” I mean, that’s just out of touch with reality, but it’s also profoundly disrespectful.

‘How about saying, I did something wrong, I have to atone for my sins, I need to go and deal with my problems?”‘

Cuomo denies the most specific allegation – that he groped an accuser’s breast under her blouse after calling her into his office in November 2020. The AG says it is credible.

‘Putting your hand up a woman’s shirt and touching their breast is not generational. I know plenty of guys who are older, who would never in a million years do that. Talking to 20-something year old women, asking them if they’d date an older guy and then leering at them – this is not acceptable behavior, it’s not even close,’ de Blasio said. 

He added that Cuomo should be criminally charged.  

Cuomo, in his pre-recorded video in response to the AG’s report, said the women had either mistaken his comments as nefarious, lied about him or exaggerated. 

The only apology he issued was to Bennett and it was in response to her complaint that after she confided in him about being a sexual assault survivor, he brought it up to her in different conversations afterwards and reminded her of it. 

He said that he was only drawing from past experience, when he helped an unnamed female relative overcome a sexual assault of her own. 

Bennett said on Wednesday that the Governor blamed his victims and that the ‘line of questioning’ was ‘inappropriate’. 

‘The victim blaming is not OK. When there are two women there are more than two… we know that. He has been an established political figure for so long and he rules by fear. He is scary. I was scared – I didn’t know where to turn,’ she said. 

The substantiated more serious allegations like that of an unidentified female assistant who said Cuomo groped her breast at his Albany mansion in November last year, and that of an unnamed State Trooper who claims he assigned her to his protective security detail despite her being inexperienced then subjected her to a torrent of abuse which included ‘running his hand down her back from her neck and saying “hey you”‘ when they were in an elevator together. 

Another state worker, who also isn’t named in the report, said he ran his hands over her ‘belly’. 

Bennett’s attorney Debra Katz said: ‘At this point it’s on the New York Legislature to take decisive action to impeach him. 

The Governor is clearly not living in reality, he’s refusing to step down. His performance yesterday was belligerent and made it clear he’s unfit to serve. 

‘He still does not get it. Shockingly, he even blamed his mother yesterday for teaching him to kiss people in appropriately.’ 

She was referring to Cuomo’s excuse that he is handsy with people because he comes from a tactile Italian family. 

To demonstrate that trait, he included an image montage in his pre-taped response yesterday that showed him hugging and kissing men and women in public, including Rev. Al Sharpton and Bill Clinton. 

In March, when the AG launched her investigation into Cuomo, Biden said that if he was found culpable, Cuomo should stand down. 

Yesterday, when asked again about the report, Biden said he ‘stands by’ his earlier statement and believes he should resign. 

In addition to the potential criminal charges by Albany DA David Soares, Cuomo is also facing civil lawsuits from the 11 women. 

He mentioned one to be filed by the executive assistant who says he groped her breast, which he said was in the works already. 

In his rebuttal to the women, his attorney issued an 85 page denial of their claims. 

The sexual harassment report comes after Cuomo – once a pandemic hero who the world looked to for leadership because of his handling of the COVID-19 disaster in New York – was stripped of his emergency powers because of his administration’s skewing of nursing home death numbers. 

His administration wasn’t counting nursing home deaths as that but rather as hospital deaths for some time, which gave the impression that fewer people were contracting COVID in nursing homes and dying from it than was the case. 

It was relevant because he had signed a controversial order that forced nursing homes to accept COVID-recovering patients, even when they were still contagious, in an effort not to overwhelm the state’s hospitals. 

Critics say he intentionally hid the true number of deaths to underplay the effects of that order. 

He has also been slammed for writing a sanctimonious memoir titled Lessons in Leadership and releasing it last October – just before NY cases and deaths soared again in a second wave of infection and before vaccines were available.  

He is expected to have made millions from the advance of that book and he gave each of his three daughters $300,000 each from it. 

At the time, he’d kept businesses closed for months without explanation. 

Cuomo’s office is yet to release his schedule for Wednesday. He is understood to be holed up at the Governor’s Mansion in Albany. 

THE ALLEGATIONS AGAINST CUOMO THAT THE AG REPORT SAYS ARE TRUE – GROPING, UNWANTED HUGGING AND KISSING, INAPPROPRIATE COMMENTS AND RETALIATING AGAINST ACCUSER WHO SPOKE OUT

‘Executive Assistant One’ 

The report says Cuomo groped ‘Executive Assistant One’ repeatedly sexually harassed her when she worked for him by subjecting her to ‘close and intimate hugs’, ‘kisses on the cheeks and forehead’, ‘at least one kiss on the lips’ and ‘touching her butt’. 

He allegedly referred to her and one other assistant as ‘mingle mamas’ and asked her repeatedly if she would ever cheat on her husband. 

In November 2020, he allegedly groped her breast at the Executive Mansion in Albany. 

‘For over three months, Executive Assistant #1 kept this groping incident to herself and planned to take it ‘to the grave,’ but found herself becoming emotional (in a way that was visible to her colleagues in the Executive Chamber) while watching the Governor state, at a press conference on March 3, 2021, that he had never ‘touched anyone inappropriately.’

She then confided in certain of her colleagues, who in turn reported her allegations to senior staff in the Executive Chamber, the report says. 

State Trooper #1 

The report says Cuomo sexually harassed a state trooper, referred to as Trooper #1, who he hired onto his protective detail, bending the three-year experience requirement. 

Once she was on his team, he allegedly ‘sexually harassed her on a number of occasions’ by ‘running his hand across her stomach  from her belly button to her right hip while she held a door open for him at an event’, ‘running his finger down her back’ while they were in an elevator together and saying ‘hey you’, kissing her on the cheek. 

He also allegedly asked her to help him find a girlfriend and said he wanted someone who ‘liked pain’, and asked her why she wanted to get married, saying ‘your sex drive goes down’. 

‘Trooper #1 found these interactions with the Governor not only offensive and uncomfortable, but markedly different from the way the Governor interacted with members of the PSU who were men, and she conveyed these incidents contemporaneously to colleagues,’ the report reads. 

Charlotte Bennett

Bennett worked briefly for Cuomo as an aide. 

AG Letitia James says her allegations that Cuomo harassed her with a series of comments are corroborated. 

Among his alleged remarks are questions about if she’d date older men, asking her help to find a girlfriend, and apparently quizzing her on a sexual assault she had endured. 

One of the other comments that he made was that he wanted to ride into the mountains with women. 

State Entity Employee #1

The unidentified employee said she attended an event with Cuomo in September 2019. 

After giving a speech, Cuomo is said to have posed for pictures with her. While the picture was being taken, he ‘grabbed her butt’. 

‘The employee was shocked and discussed it with a number of friends, family and co-workers,’ the report says. 

She also ‘memorialized the Governor’s inappropriate touching’ contemporaneously, but the report doesn’t say how.  

State Entity Employee #2  – Doctor who gave Cuomo his COVID test on camera

One of the women whose allegations were corroborated was the doctor who performed his COVID-19 test at one of his March 2020 press conferences. 

She says that when he told her, in front of cameras ‘nice to see you doctor, you make that gown look good,’ it was sexual harassment. 

The investigators agreed. They also said that before the test, he asked her not to swab him so hard that it ‘hit his brain’. 

She replied that she’d be ‘gentle but accurate’ and he said ‘I’ve heard that before.’

The doctor said his remark was ‘implied in a sexual nature’. 

Virginia Limmiatis

Virginia Liammiatis worked for National Grid and was wearing a t-shirt with the company’s name written across her chest when she says she met Cuomo. 

He ran his ‘two fingers across her chest, pressing down on each of the letters as he did so and reading out the name of the company as he went’. 

The report says he then ‘leaned in, with his face close to her cheek, and said ‘I’m going to say I see a spider on your shoulder’ before brushing the area between her shoulder and her breasts’.  

‘Ms. Limmiatis came forward in this investigation after she heard the Governor state, during the March 3, 2021 press conference, that he had never touched anyone inappropriately. 

‘As Ms. Limmiatis testified to us, ‘He is lying again. 

‘He touched me inappropriately. I am compelled to come forward to tell the truth… I didn’t know how to report what he did to me at the time and was burdened by shame, but not coming forward now would make me complicit in his lie, and I won’t do it.” 

Lindsey Boylan

Boylan says that Cuomo made inappropriate remarks to her when she worked as chief of staff to the CEO of the Empire State Development Corporation including that he found her attractive and that he wanted to play strip poker. 

She also says that he physically touched her on various parts of her body, including her waist, legs, and back. 

She claims that once she reported her allegations, she was victimized by his team who ran a smear campaign against her while she ran for office.   

Alyssa McGrath 

McGrath was another executive assistant who says Cuomo harassed her. 

‘In his interactions with another executive assistant, Alyssa McGrath, the Governor made inappropriate comments and engaged in harassing conduct, including: regularly asking about her personal life, including her marital status and divorce; asking whether Ms. McGrath would tell on Executive Assistant #1 if she were to cheat on her husband—and whether Ms. McGrath herself planned to ‘mingle’ with men’.  

‘Kaitlin’ 

Kaitlin – whose second name is not public – met the Governor in 2016 at a fundraising event where they were photographed together in a dance pose. 

Afterwards, she was hired by him in a junior position but given a salary of $120,000 – a figure so high she says it was laughed at in her interview.  

Ana Liss 

Liss worked in the Executive Chamber between 2013 and 2015, during which time she says the governor subjected her to sexual harassment that included being called ‘sweetheart’ and ‘darling’, and placing his hand around her lower waist. 

He also kissed her hands and cheek, she said.

Despite feeling uncomfortable, she says she did not report them because ‘for whatever reason, in his office the rules were different. It was just, you should view it as a compliment if the Governor finds you aesthetically pleasing enough, if he finds you interesting enough to ask questions like that. 

‘And so even though it was strange and uncomfortable and technically not permissible in a typical workplace environment, I was in this mindset that it was the twilight zone and…the typical rules did not apply.’ 

Anna Ruch 

Ruch was a guest at a wedding, as was the Governor, in 2019 when she says he put his hands on a section of her back that was exposed by a cut-out in her dress. 

She grabbed his wrist to move it away and he responded by saying ‘wow, you’re aggressive,’ according to the report. 

Cuomo then grabbed her face with both of his hands and said ‘can I kiss you?’ 

He was pictured kissing her cheek.