Gov. Andrew Cuomo
By Jonathan Allen
NEW YORK (Reuters) -New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday denied the findings of a five-month investigation by the state's attorney general that found he sexually harassed multiple women in violation of U.S. and state law and created a "climate of fear" in his office.
"I never touched anyone inappropriately," said Cuomo, a Democrat who has served as governor since 2011. "That is just not who I am and that's not who I have ever been."
The investigation showed that Cuomo engaged in unwanted groping, kissing and hugging, and made inappropriate comments to a total of 11 women, state Attorney General Letitia James told a news briefing earlier on Tuesday, adding that the governor's office had become a "toxic workplace" that enabled harassment to occur.
"The facts are much different than what has been portrayed," Cuomo said.
The findings, detailed in a scathing 168-page report, could deal a devastating blow to Cuomo's political future and hinder his administration, although the probe was civil in nature and will not directly lead to any criminal charges against him.
"These 11 women were in a hostile and toxic work environment. We should believe women," said James, a Democrat.
"What this investigation revealed was a disturbing pattern of conduct by the governor of the great state of New York," James added.
There was no immediate comment from the governor's office. Cuomo, 63, has denied wrongdoing.
Carl Heastie, speaker of the Democratic-controlled New York Assembly who has authorized an impeachment investigation into Cuomo's conduct, in a statement called the report's findings "disturbing" and said they pointed to "someone who is not fit for office."
State Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the Senate majority leader, issued a statement saying the report detailed "unacceptable behavior" by Cuomo and his administration and calling on him to "resign for the good of the state."
"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.
Investigators spoke to 179 people, including complainants and current and former members of the executive chamber, James said. She said the probe resulted in a "clear picture" of what she called a "climate of fear" in which Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women, many of them young.
James launched her investigation into the allegations after receiving a formal request from Cuomo's office on March 1 to do so as the number of publicly reported allegations mounted.
James named two veteran outside attorneys to run the investigation: Joon Kim, a former federal prosecutor and acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, and Anne Clark, an employment lawyer with experience in sexual harassment cases.
Kim told the briefing that the Cuomo workplace was "rife with bullying, fear and intimidation" and one in which crossing the governor or his senior staff meant you would be "written off, cast aside or worse."
The report said one of the women Cuomo targeted was a state trooper. Clark said Cuomo stood behind the trooper in an elevator and "ran his finger from her neck down her spin and said, 'Hey you.'" The governor also ran an "open hand from her belly button to her hip where she carries her gun," Clark added. The trooper, according to Clark, said Cuomo inappropriately touched her from "in her words, her chest to her privates."
The report shows that investigators did not find Cuomo's explanations about his encounters to be credible. It said Cuomo's "blanket denials and lack of recollection as to specific incidents stood in stark contrast to the strength, specificity, and corroboration of the complainants' recollections."
It was a swift fall for the governor. Cuomo became nationally popular last year in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic by presenting himself as an authoritative figure in daily televised press conferences. The complaints about sexual harassment emerged after broader criticism by Democratic politicians in the state that Cuomo governed through intimidation.
Cuomo, the divorced father of three adult daughters, was elected to three terms as governor, as was his late father, Mario Cuomo. Like his father, Andrew Cuomo resisted the temptation to run for U.S. president despite much speculation about possible national ambitions.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut; editing by Will Dunham and Jonathan Oatis)
Trump Doubles Down On Racist Tweets Against Congresswomen
If you try to defend President Donald Trump, you will always end up having the rug pulled out from underneath you. It’s a law of nature.
And yet, so many of the president’s allies have failed to learn this simple lesson. So when Trump launched a new attack at progressive Democratic lawmakers that was one of his most obviously racist smears, inevitably, some of his defenders tried to deny the obvious truth.
His screed attacked a group of women who have come to define the left wing of the Democratic caucus, which includes Reps. Ilhan Omar (MN), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Rashida Talib (MI), and Ayanna Pressley (MA). Though only Omar is an immigrant (she was a refugee from Somalia as a child), Trump seemed to assume all four women of color weren’t born in the United States, and most egregiously, he suggested they should “go back” to other countries:
Matt Wolking, a deputy director of communications for the president’s re-election campaign, was one of the first to defend the president, by bizarrely claiming he didn’t say what he said.
Of course, saying “go back to your country and then come back” includes the statement “go back to your country,” so his statement was absurd on its face. To read the argument as generously as possible, though, Woking might have been trying to argue that Trump’s statement couldn’t echo to the racist trope of white Americans telling minorities to “go back to their country,” because that trope doesn’t usually include an invitation to return. However, even this argument is clearly nonsense, because there’s no reason Trump’s claim that the congresswomen should “help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came” and then “come back and show us how it is done” should be seen as anything but disingenuous.
First of all, most of the women that he’s clearly referring to were born in the United States, so there’s nowhere for them to “go back” to. They are fighting to improve the only country they’ve lived in. Second, even telling someone like Omar, a refugee, that she owes more allegiance to “fix” the country her family fled as a child is still patently racist. And the idea that we should take Trump seriously when he says he would want to learn from Omar if she were able to “fix” Somalia’s problems is so ridiculous that Wolking should be ashamed to ever speak publicly about politics ever again.
But even more humiliating for Wolking is that on Monday, Trump decided to annihilate even this tissue paper-thin defense of Trump’s tweets.
“These are people that hate our country,” Trump said at the White House. “They hate our country. They hate it, I think, with a passion.”
He continued: “If somebody has a problem with our country, if somebody doesn’t want to be in our country, they should leave.” He said nothing about them “coming back.” (And of course, this is completely hypocritical, as Trump has been extremely critical of the United States in recent years. In 2015, he literally published a book called “Crippled America” — and yet no one thought the fact that he had criticisms of the country meant he should find somewhere else to live.)
And CNN’s Jake Tapper pointed out that Trump’s new comments also undercut the defense from Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD). Harris said Trump’s tweets were “clearly not racist” and the congresswomen to “go back to the district they came from — to the neighborhood they came from.”
Of course, Trump’s original tweets and his doubling down on the remarks make it clear that this isn’t at all what Trump meant.