If there’s one thing that’s perhaps most surprising from New York Attorney General Letitia James’s brutal report on sexual harassment by New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D), it might be that it doesn’t come with a call for a criminal investigation.
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The report stops short of that, despite accusing Cuomo of violating state and federal law with a pattern of sexual harassment, unwanted and intimate touching, and a vindictive and abusive work environment that stifled would-be accusers.
But the allegations describe the actions of a serial sexual harasser. Cuomo has played down the previously known allegations against him as being the result of misunderstandings. What is laid out in the report is something else entirely, and it places a new onus on Democrats who have trodden lightly around calls for Cuomo’s resignation or removal to address the situation.
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The report by James (D) details Cuomo’s alleged harassment — and sometimes apparently more than that — of 11 women. Cuomo is accused not just of making sexually suggestive comments, but also unwanted and intimate touching that included reaching up an executive assistant’s blouse to grab her breast and, in the case of a state trooper, running his finger along sensitive areas of her body after seeking her promotion to his security detail.
In the case of the trooper, Cuomo is accused of seeking to elevate her to a job for which she didn’t have the technical qualifications, and then proceeding to engage in harassing behavior and unwanted touching:
After meeting Trooper #1, he spoke with a senior member of his protective detail (“Senior Investigator #1”) about seeking to have Trooper #1 join the Protective Services Unit (“PSU”), the unit of the New York State Police that is in charge of protecting the Governor and works in close vicinity of the Governor. Trooper #1 was then hired into the PSU, despite not meeting the requirement to have at least three years of State Police service to join the PSU. In an email to Trooper #1 shortly after the RFK Bridge event, Senior Investigator #1 noted, attaching a vacancy notice with a two-year service requirement (as opposed to three years), “Ha ha they changed the minimum from 3 years to 2. Just for you.”
After Trooper #1 joined the PSU, the Governor sexually harassed her on a number of occasions, including by: (1) 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; (2) running his finger down her back, from the top of her neck down her spine to the middle of her back, saying “hey, you,” while she was standing in front of him in an elevator; (3) kissing her (and only her) on the cheek in front of another Trooper and asking to kiss her on another occasion, which she deflected; and (4) making sexually suggestive and gender-based comments, including (a) asking her to help him find a girlfriend and describing his criteria for a girlfriend as someone who “[c]an handle pain,” (b) asking her why she wanted to get married when marriage means “your sex drive goes down,” and (c) asking her why she did not wear a dress. ... Several other PSU Troopers corroborated Trooper #1’s allegations, including some who had personally witnessed some of the touching and comments as well as the gender-based difference in the way the Governor treated Troopers.
In the case of Executive Assistant #1, the investigation found her allegations to be credible and said Cuomo had effectively fondled her in ways that are nearly impossible to explain as anything but predatory behavior.
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“As described in greater detail below, over time, the Governor’s behavior toward Executive Assistant #1 escalated to more intimate physical contact, including regular hugs and kisses on the cheek (and at least one kiss on the lips), culminating in incidents where the Governor grabbed Executive Assistant #1’s butt while they took a selfie in the Executive Mansion, and where the Governor, during a hug, reached under Executive Assistant #1’s blouse and grabbed her breast,” the report says.
The executive assistant further explained in her testimony: “He cupped my breast. I have to tell you it was — at the moment I was in such shock that I could just tell you that I just remember looking down seeing his hand, seeing the top of my bra and I remember it was like a little even the cup — the kind of bra that I had to the point I could tell you doesn’t really fit me properly, it was a little loose, I just remember seeing exactly that.”
Cuomo denied the account, suggesting he would have been crazy to do such a thing “with 10 staff around.” The report notes that the executive assistant said the scene transpired in the smaller of Cuomo’s private offices in the governor’s mansion and found that there was no evidence or reason to believe others would have been in the vicinity of the office, much less 10 people.
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In total, the investigation found many of the allegations to have been corroborated by others. It also found the women involved more credible than Cuomo.
“The Governor’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, as well as the reports of many other individuals who offered observations and experiences of the Governor’s conduct,” the report says.
After a number of women came forward with allegations, Cuomo earlier this year requested James’s investigation, contending that it would ultimately clear him.
“I ask the people of this state to wait for the facts from the attorney general’s report before forming an opinion,” Cuomo said.
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Soon, though, Cuomo’s team was attacking an investigation run by an erstwhile political ally.
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The call for an investigation was clearly, at least in part, an effort to buy time as allegations against him built and some New York Democrats moved toward calling for Cuomo’s resignation or removal. But now the findings have come out from an investigation that Cuomo called for, and they paint a picture that is anything but favorable toward the governor and will undoubtedly lead to an unprecedented number of calls for his exit. Most New York legislators have already called for his resignation, but Tuesday’s news would seem to hasten potential impeachment proceedings for a governor who has since indicated he intends to stick around.
Democrats in recent years have taken a hard line on allegations of sexual misconduct by the elected officials in their midst, although that has softened somewhat since many of them expressed buyer’s remorse over pushing out Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.). Cuomo himself in 2013, for instance, tweeted: “There should be a zero tolerance policy when it comes to sexual harassment & must send a clear message that this behavior is not tolerated.”
The allegations against Cuomo are significantly more serious than the ones against Franken were, but the defense is similar: that he doesn’t remember things the same way and that perhaps these were misunderstandings. But unlike in Franken’s case, the allegations have now been validated by an extensive investigation by a fellow Democrat, and the results put immediate pressure on Democrats to respond. It also makes the standard that Cuomo set himself virtually impossible to ignore.