ALBANY – An explosive report accusing Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of repeatedly sexually harassing female government employees, including a state trooper and a woman Cuomo knew to be a sexual assault victim, has left the three-term governor seemingly facing a choice between resignation or impeachment.
“I believe these women,’’ Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat like Cuomo, said of the 11 women who talked to her investigators about Cuomo’s behavior. The report said the Cuomo administration was a “toxic” workplace in which at least one of the women faced workplace retaliation for reporting her run-ins with Cuomo.
By late Tuesday afternoon, calls for his resignation ranged from political friends and foes all the way to the president of the United States. In a briefing with reporters, President Biden answered "I think he should resign" when he was asked about the report.
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But a defiant Cuomo, in a video his office released Tuesday afternoon that included pictures of him kissing and hugging a host of women and men in what he called his lifelong behavior of being affectionate toward people, lashed out at some of his accusers, James and her investigators and the press.
“The facts are different than what has been portrayed," Cuomo said.
“I never touched anyone inappropriately," he added.
But as each hour passed Tuesday, the drumbeat against Cuomo grew louder and more intense from politicians and groups on the left, center and right.
The Albany County district attorney, David Soares, revealed later he has an “ongoing” criminal investigation of Cuomo involving the sexual harassment allegations.
If Cuomo does not bow to the calls for his resignation, lawmakers will accelerate an impeachment investigation by the Assembly Judiciary Committee that could this month bring the Assembly into session to vote on whether to impeach him. If the Assembly impeaches him, Cuomo would be immediately removed from office, and at least temporarily replaced by Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, while the state Senate would then have to hold a trial to consider the charges.
Democrats who control the Assembly huddled in private for nearly three hours Tuesday after the report’s release. A lawmaker speaking on condition of anonymity said there was "overwhelming sentiment" among Assembly Democrats that Cuomo either resign or the body will move soon with impeachment proceedings.
The question is whether an impeachment vote would come within days or weeks.
"I don't think he should be in a position of power any longer over people," one lawmaker told The Buffalo News.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Bronx Democrat, has been under pressure from a number of his rank-and-file members to swiftly go to an impeachment vote.
After the session with his colleagues, Heastie said it is now "abundantly clear" that Cuomo has lost the confidence of the Assembly Democratic conference and "can no longer remain in office." He said the Assembly impeachment investigation will move "expeditiously" to complete its case against Cuomo.
James this afternoon said she is giving the Assembly Judiciary Committee, at its request, materials from her investigation and pledged to cooperate with the lawmakers.
AG's report finds culture of bullying and intimidation
Besides finding that Cuomo had sexually harassed women for years, the attorney general and her investigators described a culture of bullying and intimidation in Cuomo’s office that normalized his behavior .
The report included allegations that top female staffers to Cuomo did not follow state law and rules when they learned of Cuomo’s sexually unwanted acts and statements to mostly young, female staffers. They said that amounted to acts of workplace retaliation committed against Cuomo’s accusers. Cuomo defended his top staffers and said the workplace he oversees is demanding, but not toxic as James accused.
James said the sexual harassment violations she alleges involve federal and state civil laws. But one of her outside investigators, Anne Clark, said prosecutors or police could seek the investigation’s materials to decide if a criminal case is warranted. A couple of hours later, Soares, the Albany County district attorney, formally sought the probe’s materials.
The governor said events described either never happened, or that his comments were misconstrued or that, perhaps, “generational” and “cultural” differences were at play between himself and his young aides. He then noted that his conversations with one staffer, Charlotte Bennett – a sexual assault survivor who worked for Cuomo as an aide in her mid 20s – were meant to help the woman because one of his own family members had survived a sexual assault.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks to the media during an event at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport in Cheektowaga in May.
The attorney general later released audio of Cuomo singing a 1960s song “Do You Love Me?” to Bennett, who took her case against Cuomo public earlier this year. Cuomo repeated his past defense for hugging and kissing women as public acts that he’s engaged in for years as a politician.
“I am the same person in public as I am in private … I try to put people at ease," he said.
The attorney general’s report said Cuomo’s office not only failed to act when the governor was accused of wrongdoing, but engaged in media spin strategies meant to undermine at least one of his accusers.
One of them – who said he groped her at the executive mansion in Albany when he called her over for help with his cell phone – previously submitted the allegation against Cuomo to the Albany Police Department. Cuomo on Tuesday said the incident never occurred.
While James’ sexual harassment investigation may be over, she said still “ongoing” is a separate investigation into allegations that Cuomo used state resources to help him with his controversial, $5.1 million book he authored last year about his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
For now, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul continues to do the delicate dance she's been doing since the Cuomo scandal exploded in March.
The Assembly Judiciary Committee is looking into those and other matters, including Cuomo’s policies and actions regarding Covid-19 cases in nursing homes last year and the underreporting of nursing home residents who were infected by the virus and died in hospitals.
Calls for resignation intensify
If the Assembly acted to impeach Cuomo – which would take approval from at least 76 of the 150 members – the governor would then be immediately removed from office temporarily and replaced by Hochul, a Buffalo Democrat. The Senate would then have to hold a trial to vote to determine if Cuomo is permanently ousted.
The New York Attorney General's report found that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women, including women in his office.
Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Westchester County Democrat who previously called on Cuomo to step down following the rush of sexual harassment allegations against him, on Tuesday reiterated that call.
“ Now that the investigation is complete and the allegations have been substantiated, it should be clear to everyone that he can no longer serve as governor," Stewart-Cousins said in a statement soon after James wrapped up a news conference with her investigators in Manhattan.
Cuomo faced calls again for him to resign by U.S. senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, an assortment of Republican and Democratic Assembly and Senate members and groups including the Working Families Party and New York State United Teachers union, while others, including New York Common Cause and the Green Party, called for an immediate start to impeachment proceedings in the Assembly.
Cuomo: 'I never touched anyone inappropriately'
Cuomo’s reactions over the months have been wide-ranging. At one point he was apologetic, though he said women had misinterpreted his comments. At another time, he dismissed accusers as politically motivated, while he once sought to redefine the interpretation of what amounts to sexual harassment in the workplace.
On Tuesday, he offered all of it: an apology to Bennett while saying he never intended any harm in his talks with her; a rejection as untrue of allegations made by the other women; a claim that he has hired an expert to guide and train him and his staff on a new sexual harassment policy; attacks on the James’ investigation and the “ugly business” of politics; something he called “trial by newspaper"; a spirited defense of some of his top female advisers singled out in the James report for their actions in the matter; and – as he has for months – a pledge that he will continue on and “not be distracted” from the duties of his job.
“I want you to know that I never touched anyone inappropriately or made inappropriate sexual advances," Cuomo said in what appeared to be a recorded video statement from the Capitol. Reporters were not invited to ask him questions.
Trooper among two new accusers in AG report
Most of the accusers’ stories had been at least partly revealed, though two new people were a part of the James report: the state trooper on Cuomo’s security detail and an executive of an energy company. Neither were named in the report.
James called the allegations – and her findings – against Cuomo as a “disturbing pattern of conduct by the governor of the great state of New York” and those on his staff who either did not follow or did not put in place procedures to protect the accusers. She said Cuomo engaged in unwanted groping, kissing, hugging and inappropriate comments.
Clark, a well-known employment law attorney who was retained by James in March along with Joon Kim, a former top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, said that "Executive Assistant No. 1" was groped by Cuomo in the Executive Mansion, and said the woman was going to keep the incident secret until she heard Cuomo publicly say last year that he never touched anyone inappropriately.
Clark said that a state trooper on the State Police detail to protect Cuomo was inappropriately touched by Cuomo in an elevator, and Cuomo later asked her why the newly engaged woman would want to get married because her "sex drive" would go down.
Thomas Mungeer, president of the PBA union that represents state troopers, said he was "dismayed and disturbed" by the James report's finding that among Cuomo's accusers was a state trooper. She told investigators Cuomo inappropriately touched her.
"I'm outraged and disgusted that one of my members, who was tasked with guarding the governor and ensuring his safety, could not enjoy the same sense of security in her work environment that he was provided," Mungeer said.
Kim, the former U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, said 11 women in all alleged Cuomo acted unlawfully.
"All of them experienced harassing conduct from the governor," Kim said of the women. He said Cuomo’s office featured bullying of staff and an almost normalization of Cuomo’s mistreatment of women. Cuomo’s lawyer denied all the allegations in a point-by-point document Cuomo’s office released Tuesday.
The Cuomo sexual harassment investigation overseen by the attorney general included interviews with 179 people – including Cuomo last month during an 11-hour session – and more than 74,000 records were collected.
Read the attorney general's report:
