Lt. Governor Kathy Hochul (D), will be the state’s first female governor as she serves the rest of his term.
When he was leveled with sexual harassment accusations earlier this year, Cuomo ignored bipartisan calls for him to resign. He predicted that the investigation that he authorized state Attorney General Letitia James to run would in the end exonerate him. He was way off. Not only did the AG’s report not exonerate the governor, but it alleged that he had harassed 11 women, some nine of them being state employees, and that Cuomo subjected many of them to touching and groping that was unwanted and unexpected. The governor’s office even retaliated against one of the women after she spoke up about how he mistreated her, according to the report.
In the aftermath of the AG’s report, the state Assembly began impeachment proceedings. Many of them were vocal about impeachment prior to the report over the same allegations. Get this, local law enforcement have announced they are looking into whether criminal charges are in order.
James was asked if Cuomo should step down after she released her report last week.
“That decision is up to the governor himself. The report speaks for itself,” she replied.
I just want to say this. Though I agree that Cuomo should resign, and though I believe he should have resigned over the murder of thousands of innocent seniors in nursing homes that he killed when he forced COVID patients into nursing homes against the CDC guidance, I still have a problem with how AG Letitia James announced her report. As much of a scumbag that Andrew Cuomo is as a human being, he is still an American citizen and he still has due process rights. Since when do prosecutors, especially a state attorney general, spend over an hour on television reading off charges of a suspect/defendant before charges have been officially made? Though I am happy that Cuomo is leaving office for being a corrupt politician, I can’t help but feel our system of justice was harmed by the amateurish behavior of the New York Attorney General.
Biden, who has many corruption problems of his own, was pretty blunt about it when he was asked.
“I think he should resign,” Biden said.
Cuomo’s resignation marks his incredible fall from grace after being the hero of Trump haters everywhere, being eyed as a possible White House candidate, winning an Emmy award for his COVID press briefings even though his response to the pandemic was disastrous for the people of New York.
Back in January is when Cuomo’s stellar progressive reputation took its first blow after the AG’s office came out with a report that the state’s Health Department had under-reported the state’s COVID death toll in nursing homes by at least half. A top aide got caught on tape telling high ranking Democrats during a conference call that the Cuomo administration hid the data because they were afraid it was “going to be used against us” by the Trump administration. That’s an admission to obstruction of justice as the US Justice Department was looking into the nursing home scandal at the time.
After the COVID deaths scandal, a string of sexual harassment allegations started coming out, including by a number of former aides. We reported when Lindsey Boylan, the first to come out against the governor, went public with allegations of sexual misconduct.
Not knowing what to expect what’s the most upsetting part aside from knowing that no one would do a damn thing even when they saw it.
No one.
And I *know* I am not the only woman.
— Lindsey Boylan (@LindseyBoylan) December 13, 2020
Boylan wrote an essay on the website Medium where she described being subjected to “pervasive harassment” in her years of working for the governor.
Boylan alleged that Cuomo made numerous inappropriate comments to her in front of other people. She said the governor once asked her to play “strip poker,” and said he once kissed her on the lips when they were alone. That’s why many people went ballistic when Cuomo said he never inappropriately touched anyone. I think unwantedly kissing a woman on the lips fits the definition of inappropriate touching.
In a desperate attempt to save his political life, Cuomo authorized James to investigate the harassment claims, and he predicted that he would be exonerated. Many believed, myself included, that it was a tactic to stall because a Democrat attorney general would never work to take down a Democrat governor. Well, that didn’t work out too well for the scheming Governor Cuomo. Instead, he got a scorching 165-page report.
Shortly after the report’s release, Cuomo maintained “I never touched anyone inappropriately or made inappropriate sexual advances,” and said he was going to focus on his job. Now he can focus on a possible criminal defense.
