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    Ex-aide to New York governors charged with being agent of Chinese government

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    A former New York state government official who worked for the former governor Andrew Cuomo and current governor, Kathy Hochul, was charged on Tuesday with acting as an undisclosed agent of the Chinese government, federal prosecutors revealed in a sprawling indictment.Linda Sun, who held numerous posts in New York state government before rising to the rank of deputy chief of staff for Hochul, was arrested on Tuesday morning along with her husband, Chris Hu, at their $3.5m home on Long Island.Prosecutors said Sun, at the request of Chinese officials, blocked representatives of the Taiwanese government from having access to the governor’s office, shaped New York governmental messaging to align with the priorities of the Chinese government and attempted to facilitate a trip to China for a high-level politician in New York, the indictment said. Hu is charged with money-laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to commit bank fraud and misuse of means of identification.In return, she and her husband received benefits including help for Hu’s China-based business activities and undisclosed tickets to performances by visiting Chinese orchestra and ballet groups, the indictment says. A Chinese government official’s personal chef prepared “Nanjing-style salted ducks” that were delivered to Sun’s parents’ home, it adds.The couple then laundered the financial proceeds, using them to buy their property in Manhasset, a condominium in Hawaii for $1.9m and luxury cars including a 2024 Ferrari, the indictment says.“As alleged, while appearing to serve the people of New York as deputy chief of staff within the … state executive chamber, the defendant and her husband actually worked to further the interests of the Chinese government and the” country’s communist party, US attorney Breon Peace said. “The illicit scheme enriched the defendant’s family to the tune of millions of dollars.”A lawyer for Sun, Seth DuCharme, did not immediately return an email seeking comment. Sun and Hu were expected to make an initial court appearance on Tuesday afternoon, a spokesperson for the US attorney’s office in Brooklyn said.The indictment outlines a series of exchanges Sun had with officials in the Chinese consulate in New York in January 2021, when Cuomo was still governor and Hochul was lieutenant governor. Neither leader is named in the document, but they are instead referred to as “Politician-1” and “Politician-2.”After Chinese officials requested a lunar new year video from the governor, Sun said Hochul could probably do it and asked for “talking points of things you want her to mention”.“Mostly holiday wishes and hope for friendship and cooperation / Nothing too political,” an official told her, according to the indictment.Sun later told a different official that she had argued with Hochul’s speechwriter over the draft because the speechwriter insisted on mentioning the “Uyghur situation” in China. She promised that she would not let that happen, and the final speech did not mention the Muslim ethnic minority, according to the indictment.The FBI searched the couple’s $3.5m home in Manhasset in late July but declined to release details at the time.Sun worked in state government for about 15 years, holding jobs in Cuomo’s administration and eventually becoming Hochul’s deputy chief of staff, according to her LinkedIn profile. In November 2022, Sun took a job at the New York labor department as deputy commissioner for strategic business development, but she left that job months later in March 2023, the profile said.In a statement, a spokesperson for Hochul’s office said the administration fired Sun after “discovering evidence of misconduct”.“This individual was hired by the executive chamber more than a decade ago. We terminated her employment in March 2023 after discovering evidence of misconduct, immediately reported her actions to law enforcement and have assisted law enforcement throughout this process,” the statement reads.A spokesperson for Cuomo did not immediately return an emailed request for comment.Sun and Hu live in a gated community on Long Island called Stone Hill. The couple bought the house in 2021 but placed it in a trust earlier this year, records show. More

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      Andrew Cuomo found to have subjected 13 women to ‘sexually hostile work environment’

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      The former New York governor Andrew Cuomo subjected at least 13 female government employees “to a sexually hostile work environment” and retaliated against four who complained, a formal agreement between the state executive chamber and the US justice department said.“Governor Cuomo repeatedly subjected these female employees to unwelcome, non-consensual sexual contact; ogling; unwelcome sexual comments; gender-based nicknames; comments on their physical appearances; and/or preferential treatment based on their physical appearances,” read the agreement, which was released on Friday.Cuomo, a Democrat and son of a former governor, Mario Cuomo, rose to national prominence during the Covid pandemic in 2020 and was widely held to hold presidential ambitions.He denied accusations of sexual misconduct, but Cuomo resigned in August 2021 after the New York attorney general, Letitia James, said she found 11 such claims credible. He was replaced by his lieutenant, Kathy Hochul.Now 66, Cuomo is fighting civil lawsuits from two accusers and, in the words of the New York Times, “slowly manoeuvring toward re-entering political life”. But, the paper added Friday, such “efforts may be sharply compromised by the justice department findings”.The investigation by the federal civil rights division and the US attorney for the eastern district of New York opened in August 2021.The settlement released Friday said Cuomo “subjected at least 13 female employees of New York state, including executive chamber employees, to a sexually hostile work environment”.The executive chamber was aware of the governor’s conduct but did not “effectively remediate the harassment on a systemic level”.“When employees attempted to raise concerns about Cuomo’s conduct to his senior staff,” the agreement said, “Cuomo’s staff failed to follow equal employment opportunity policies and procedures to promptly report those allegations to the appropriate investigative body.“Indeed, the executive chamber’s response was designed only to protect Cuomo from further accusations.”The investigation “also found that Cuomo’s senior staff were aware of his conduct and retaliated against four of the women he harassed”.The agreement listed reforms to be implemented and some undertaken under Hochul, beginning with the removal of employees held to have “facilitated Cuomo’s misconduct and/or engaged in unlawful retaliation against women who raised concerns”.Rita Glavin, a Cuomo lawyer, told the Times: “This is nothing more than a political settlement with no investigation. Governor Cuomo did not sexually harass anyone.”But Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general in the civil rights division, said: “Executive chamber employees deserve to work without fear of sexual harassment and harsh reprisal when they oppose that harassment.“The conduct in the executive chamber under the former governor, the state’s most powerful elected official, was especially egregious because of the stark power differential involved and the victims’ lack of avenues to report and redress harassment.”Hochul said: “The moment I took office, I knew I needed to root out the culture of harassment that had previously plagued the executive chamber and implement strong policies to promote a safe workplace for all employees, and [I] took immediate action to do so.”Breon Peace, US attorney for the eastern district of New York, said: “We appreciate the governor’s stated determination to make sure that sexual harassment does not recur at the highest level of New York state government.” More

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      What’s Left Unsaid review: Andrew Cuomo and the case for his defense

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      Andrew Cuomo resigned as governor of New York in August 2021, amid a blizzard of sexual harassment allegations. None were prosecuted. Against this backdrop, he smolders. Once a giant figure in the Democratic ranks, he is out of a job. He “died as he lived”, Lis Smith, a former adviser, wrote in Any Given Tuesday, her memoir published last year. Cuomo had “zero regard for the people around him and the impact his actions would have on them”.Enter Melissa DeRosa with What’s Left Unsaid, a full-throated defense of her own former boss. On the page and while promoting her book, Cuomo’s chief adviser and most senior aide generally wields a sledgehammer. Except when she doesn’t.“I don’t want to comment on Lis’s book,” De Rosa said, when asked by Vanity Fair. “We all lived through this in our own ways. We all had to cope with the fallout of it.”Subtitled My Life at the Center of Power, Politics and Crisis, DeRosa’s memoir is pocked with scenes of a marriage gone south, of trying to cope with Covid-19 and of general governmental strife. She punches hard. Her anger is white hot. Her book is deliberate and focused.She slams Cuomo’s accusers. Letitia James, the New York attorney general, and Kathy Hochul, Cuomo’s successor as governor, get it in the neck. Aides to James had sexual harassment-related problems of their own, DeRosa charges. She also calls out CNN and the New York Times for their own alleged deficits on that score.DeRosa has connections. She interned in Hillary Clinton’s office, when Clinton was a New York senator. She thanks Clinton for helping put steel in her spine. She gives a shoutout to Huma Abedin, Clinton’s close aide. DeRosa led New York operations for Barack Obama’s political action committee. She rose through the ranks of state government and Cuomo’s office. She charges Hochul with administrative and political ineptitude, echoing criticism, leveled by Nancy Pelosi, that Hochul cost the Democrats control of the US House by screwing up the New York redistricting process, handing Republicans seats.“The governor didn’t realize soon enough where the trouble was,” Pelosi told Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. But here, DeRosa can be myopic. According to Bill de Blasio, the former New York mayor, Cuomo was also at fault in the process that most observers say facilitated Republican gains. If a mere 89 more New Yorkers had been counted, the size of the state’s congressional delegation would have suffered no loss in size.“For God’s sake, if the state had invested in the census, could you have found 89 more people to count? Sure, easily,” De Blasio has said. “This was a lost opportunity by the state government to get the count right.”DeRosa acknowledges tensions between mayor and governor but takes De Blasio to task for his embrace of leftwing politics.“That meant staking out a position that actively opposed police presence,” she writes, blaming De Blasio for problems related to crime. She also calls him out for sidling up to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive star in Congress, and mocks his presidential run to nowhere.DeRosa also deals with the fractious relationship between Cuomo and the White House of Donald Trump, for so long a New York fixture and a former client of the Cuomo family law firm, Blutrich, Falcone & Miller.In 2020, under Covid, New York lockdown policy put it at odds with the administration.“We’ve done polling, and you guys are in the wrong place on this,” a “smug” Jared Kushner is quoted as telling DeRosa, saying New York was out of sync with Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Florida.“We were in the middle of a pandemic, one that had already killed tens of thousands of people, and I was talking with President Trump’s top adviser … about polling in swing states,” DeRosa writes.In fall 2021, Ron DeSantis actively discouraged vaccination. The grim reaper had a field day on the governor’s front lawn. Florida came to surpass New York in fatalities, in absolute and relative numbers. According to the Lancet, Florida’s unadjusted death rate (per 100,000) was 416, for New York 384.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDeRosa also attacks Trump for reneging on federal assistance to infrastructure projects. Why? Cuomo publicly criticized Trump. To quote DeRosa, “the president of the United States had lost his mind over four sentences in a convention speech.”Yet Cuomo has more in common with Trump than DeRosa acknowledges. It went beyond being “two tough guys from Queens, raised by larger-than-life fathers”, as the author puts it. Confronted with pushback over his decision in 2014 to disband an anti-corruption commission which he himself appointed, Cuomo bellowed: “It’s my commission. I can appoint it, I can disband it. I appoint you, I can un-appoint.”L’état, c’est moi.DeRosa pays tribute to family. In summer 2021, as Cuomo was brought crashing down, she repaired to her sister’s in-law’s place on Cape Cod, away from prying eyes.She also deals with friends – some of them now former. Elise Stefanik, the New York Republican congresswoman who become a top Trump toady, was a buddy and classmate. DeRosa “knew her as ‘Little Elise’”. Stefanik landed at Harvard, DeRosa at Cornell. DeRosa reports a heated discussion over same-sex marriage that left Stefanik shaken. DeRosa compared her to a segregationist.The fact that Stefanik called for Cuomo and his senior staff to resign probably triggered this trip down memory lane. Left unmentioned: Stefanik was one of 39 Republicans, and the sole member of House GOP leadership, to vote in favor of federal protection for same-sex and interracial marriage.Promoting her book, DeRosa was asked by Vanity Fair about Cuomo, karma and payback. She said: “I don’t like to think that we live in a world where the answer is, ‘Well, you got it because you deserved it.’”Vanity Fair’s headline? “Melissa DeRosa Isn’t Done Defending Andrew Cuomo”. She and her boss are not about to disappear.
      What’s Left Unsaid is published in the US by Sterling Publishing More

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      Any Given Tuesday: Lis Smith on Cuomo, Spitzer and a political life

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      Any Given Tuesday: Lis Smith on Cuomo, Spitzer and a political life The Democratic operative delivers a memoir and coming-of-age tale that lands punches – and sometimes pulls themWith Any Given Tuesday, Lis Smith delivers 300 pages of smack, snark and vulnerability. A veteran Democratic campaign hand, she shares up-close takes of those who appear in the news and dishes autobiographical vignettes. The book, her first, is a political memoir and coming-of-age tale. It is breezy and informative.Thank You For Your Servitude review – disappointing tale of Trump’s townRead moreFor two decades, Smith worked in the trenches. She witnessed plenty and bears the resulting scars. Most recently, she was a senior media adviser to Pete Buttigieg, now transportation secretary in the Biden administration, and counseled Andrew Cuomo, now a disgraced ex-governor of New York.According to Smith, Buttigieg made politics ennobling and fun. More important, he offered a road to redemption.“He saw me for who I actually was and, for the first time in my adult life, I did too,” Smith writes. According to exit polls in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Buttigieg brought meaning to middle-aged white college graduates. These days, he is seen by Democrats as a possible alternative to Joe Biden in 2024.Smith dated Eliot Spitzer, another governor of New York who fell from grace.“We were like a lit match and dynamite,” she writes. Smith also gushes about Spitzer’s “deep set, cerulean blue eyes”, the “most gorgeous” such pair she had ever seen. A 24-year age gap provided additional fuel but Spitzer, once known as the Sheriff of Wall Street, spent less than 15 months in office. His administration ended abruptly in 2009, over his trysts with prostitutes.Smith can be blunt and brutal. She savages Cuomo and flattens Bill de Blasio, the former mayor of New York City, like a pancake.Smith recounts in detail Cuomo’s mishandling of Covid, the allegations of sexual harassment and his obfuscation. He “died as he lived”, she writes, damningly, “with zero regard for the people around him and the impact his actions would have on them”.As for De Blasio: “This guy can’t handle a 9/11.” He also came up short, we are told, in the personal hygiene department: a “gross unshowered guy”. De Blasio retracted an employment offer to Smith, after her relationship with Spitzer became tabloid fodder. He also coveted an endorsement from Spitzer that never materialized.“Both of us had tried to get in bed with Eliot but only one of us had been successful,” Smith brags.On Tuesday, De Blasio dropped out of a congressional primary after gaining a bare 3% support in a recent poll.Smith is very much a New Yorker. She grew up in a leafy Westchester suburb, north of the city. Her parents were loving and politically conscious. Her father led a major white-shoe law firm. He introduced his daughter to football and the star-crossed New York Jets.Smith went to Dartmouth. Not surprisingly, her politics are establishment liberal. She worked on campaigns for Jon Corzine, for New Jersey governor; Terry McAuliffe, for governor of Virginia; and Claire McCaskill, for senator in Missouri. In 2012 she earned a credit from Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.Smith has kind words for McAuliffe and McCaskill but portrays Corzine, a former Goldman Sachs chief executive, as aloof, never warming to the reality that elections are about retail politics and people. Despite this, Smith omits mention of the markets-moving failure of MF Global, a Corzine-run commodities brokerage that left a wake of ruin.“I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date,” Corzine testified before a congressional committee. “I do not know which accounts are unreconciled or whether the unreconciled accounts were or were not subject to the segregation rules.”Corzine holds an MBA from the University of Chicago.Smith is candid about the corrosive effects of the Democrats’ lurch left.“If someone doesn’t support every policy on their progressive wish list … they’re branded an enemy or a Republican in disguise. If these ideological purists think a West Virginia Democrat is bad, wait till they get a load of the Republican alternative.”But Smith also falls victim to ideological myopia. Discussing the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 and its considerable political consequences, she appears to solely blame the Ferguson police for the death of the African American teen, who she says was “shot to death in broad daylight”. Like Hillary Clinton, Smith neglects to mention that police fired after Brown lunged for an officer’s gun. She also does not mention that Brown tussled with a convenience store owner before his confrontation with the law.Inadvertently, Smith highlights the volatility of the Democrats’ multicultural, upstairs-downstairs coalition. Worship at the twin altars of identity politics and political correctness exacts a steep price in votes and can negatively impact human life. See New York City’s current crime wave for proof.Newt and the Never Trumpers: Gingrich, Tim Miller and the fate of the Republican partyRead moreSmith reserves some of her sharpest digs for Roger Stone, convicted and then-pardoned confidante of Donald Trump, pen-pal of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. She calls him a “stone-cold sociopath”. But she skates over animus that existed between Stone and Spitzer, her ex. In 2007, Stone allegedly left a threatening telephone message for Spitzer’s father, a real estate magnate. Months later, Stone told the FBI Spitzer “used the service of high-priced call girls” while staying in Florida.In the end, Smith is an idealist.“I believe in the power of politics to improve people’s lives,” she writes. “I still believe there is hope for the future.”
      Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story is published in the US by Harper
      TopicsBooksPolitics booksDemocratsUS politicsAndrew CuomoEliot SpitzerPete ButtigiegreviewsReuse this content More

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      Andrew Cuomo resigned amid a wave of scandals. But don’t count him out

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      Andrew Cuomo resigned amid a wave of scandals. But don’t count him outCan the New York governor accused of sexual harassment as well as a Covid cover-up succeed in his comeback campaign? Last summer, the three-term New York governor Andrew Cuomo was considered, in political terms, dead and buried after one of the most spectacular falls from grace in modern US politics.A year earlier, he’d been an empathetic pandemic hero, offering New Yorkers a measure of confidence in the state’s response to the early waves of Covid-19 while the US president, Donald Trump, floundered or blustered his way through daily briefings as the terrifying death toll mounted.But then Cuomo was forced to resign from office, leaving wearing a cloak of scandals ranging from allegations of sexual harassment leveled by 11 women, including a member of his protection detail, to a cover-up of the number of elderly people who died in New York nursing homes from Covid-19.Andrew Cuomo labelled a ‘sick, pathetic man’ by New York attorney generalRead moreYet now – at 64 and out of office – Cuomo is trying to flip the narrative again and claw back his reputation and maybe, just maybe, his political career. “I’m not disappearing,” he told New York magazine last year and he might just mean it.Over the past several weeks, Cuomo has accelerated a campaign of image correction that some believe is a prelude to efforts toward political rehabilitation. With $16m left over in his vacated governorship re-election campaign coffers, he’s got funds to finance the project.At a Brooklyn church last week Cuomo gave his first public speech since leaving office. In an event that looked and felt a lot like old-fashioned retail politicking, Cuomo took aim at those that had brought him down. “The actions against me were prosecutorial misconduct,” the Bible-quoting Cuomo said in the speech. “They used cancel culture to effectively overturn an election.”The speech came after the launch of a digital and television advertising campaign that is blaring the same message: Cuomo is the victim, unfairly driven from office.In America’s topsy-turvy politics, where chaos and division seem common currency on both sides of the political divide, even his critics are loth to count him out.“The country elected Donald Trump, so all bets are off,” said Sonia Ossorio, president of New York City’s National Organization for Women. “It’s the wild, wild west of politics right now across the country. In terms of personal redemption every human being is entitled to seek it.“News coverage focuses on politics as a sport,” Ossorio added “which diverts attention from what matters: keeping our government honest.”The question is, does anyone care besides Cuomo, and perhaps his brother Chris who was fired from CNN for his involvement in his elder sibling’s damage control efforts?“The effort you’re seeing is more focused on a public rehabilitation than pursuit of a specific political audience,” said Evan Nierman, a crisis management expert. “The likelihood that New Yorkers are going to jump back on the Cuomo train after it was derailed in such an explosive fashion is unlikely.“Andrew Cuomo is the kind of person who doesn’t like not being in control. He likes directing things, shaping policy and outcomes, not being on the receiving end of that. So he’s looking for opportunities to influence his own future and take back a measure of control.”Last month, his attorney, Rita Glavin, repeated proclamations of his innocence and challenged an independent report from the state attorney general’s office that concluded “the governor sexually harassed a number of state employees through unwelcome and unwanted touching, as well as by making numerous offensive and sexually suggestive comments.”The central theme of Cuomo’s argument is that the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who announced and later dropped out of a run for governor, was politically motivated. Glavin has said she plans to file a misconduct complaint about James to an attorney grievance committee and has claimed James’s office had “directed an utterly biased investigation”.Four district attorneys looked into bringing charges but declined to do so, each stating carefully that their decision was not based on the credibility of his accusers. A fifth, from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, dropped its inquiry.It’s a crack in the door that Cuomo may believe he can lever open by reinterpreting, with help of the campaign war chest, the conclusions of James’s investigation.The former governor has had conspicuous Manhattan meetings with the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and New York’s mayor, Eric Adams. Before the largely Black congregation in Brooklyn, Cuomo offered a defiant and angry interpretation of his situation.“God isn’t done with me yet,” he continued. “I am blessed, I have many options in life and I am open to all, but on the question if I am at peace, no I am not. But I don’t want to be at peace, and by the way I don’t think you should be at peace either.”His attorney has put it more simply, telling a radio interviewer that Cuomo is “not going to let this go, because he can’t”.But his efforts provoked a sharp response. “Instead of accepting responsibility, serial sexual harasser Andrew Cuomo continues to challenge the accounts of victims,” read a statement from a group of nine women’s rights and advocacy organizations, including Eleanor’s Legacy, Amplify Her and Women of Color for Progress.Members of the Sexual Harassment Working Group – an Albany-based group of state government employees who have experienced workplace sexual harassment or assault said Cuomo was “using taxpayer dollars to fund his victim-shaming campaign after multiple investigations exposed him for what he truly is: a serial sexual harasser who fostered a toxic, hostile work environment”.The response broadly tallies with public opinion polls. A Sienna College poll published last month found that 52% of Democrats said they believed he sexually harassed multiple women, and said they believed James by a margin of 2-to-1 when she concluded he was a serial sexual harasser. Eighty per cent said he’d made the right decision to resign.“New Yorkers are not ready to forgive and forget when it comes to Cuomo,” said Steven Greenberg, a Siena College pollster.But the former governor, who has also spent $1.8m on legal and public relations expenses that include resisting efforts by an ethics commission to claw back more than $5m he received for a book about his handling of the pandemic, remains set on rehabilitation.He told Bloomberg last month that he had not resigned because he did anything wrong – but because he didn’t want to be a distraction. “I’m still focused on communicating what happened here. Because as a precedent, it has to be exposed.”Nor would he rule out a future run for office.“He’s trying to find a way to remind people of what he thinks they should think about him,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic pollster and former political scientist.Cuomo, he said, was trying to find something that people can feel good about. Against him are voter tendencies against three-term governors and that the accusations against him are “the very things New Yorkers and Americans have problems with”.“He’s got to find a way to explain who he was as governor and make it believable before people will give him the opportunity,” Sheinkopf says. “This is not a guy who dies easily but he’s pretty close to moribund right now.”TopicsAndrew CuomoNew YorkUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Andrew Cuomo labelled a ‘sick, pathetic man’ by New York attorney general

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      Andrew Cuomo labelled a ‘sick, pathetic man’ by New York attorney generalLetitia James launches attack after former governor, who resigned amid sexual harassment allegations, decries cancel culture Andrew Cuomo, who resigned as governor of New York last year over sexual harassment allegations, is a “sick, pathetic man”, the state attorney general said on Sunday in a stinging rebuke.Cuomo had spoken at a Brooklyn church, complaining about cancel culture and the accusations against him and also appearing to hint at a political comeback.Andrew Cuomo ordered to give up $5.1m in pandemic book earningsRead moreLetitia James, whose investigations were part of the three-term governor’s downfall last August after she concluded he sexually harassed 11 women, said: “Serial sexual harasser Andrew Cuomo won’t even spare a house of worship from his lies.“Even though multiple independent investigations found his victims to be credible, Cuomo continues to blame everyone but himself.”The attorney general also said New Yorkers were “ready to move forward from this sick, pathetic man”.Cuomo’s first public appearance since leaving office came a week after his campaign launched a digital and TV ad campaign pushing the message that he was driven from office unfairly.In Brooklyn, Cuomo quoted the Bible as he described his problems but also attacked “political sharks” in Albany, the state capital, who he said “smelled blood”.“The actions against me were prosecutorial misconduct,” Cuomo said. “They used cancel culture to effectively overturn an election.”Cuomo resigned days after being found to have sexually harassed women. It was also found that he and aides worked to retaliate against one accuser.Several district attorneys in New York have said they found Cuomo’s accusers “credible” but available evidence was not strong enough to press criminal charges.Last month, a New York state trooper sued Cuomo, claiming he caused severe mental anguish and emotional distress by touching her inappropriately and making suggestive comments. A Cuomo spokesperson called the suit a “cheap cash extortion”.On Sunday, Cuomo said his behavior was not appropriate but did not violate the law.“I didn’t appreciate how fast the perspectives changed,” he said. “I’ve learned a powerful lesson and paid a very high price for learning that lesson. God isn’t finished with me yet.”Cuomo has not said he is running for office but he is still sitting on a multimillion-dollar campaign war chest he could use to finance another run. He used his speech on Sunday to condemn a social media-fueled climate he said was dangerous.“Any accusation can trigger condemnation without facts or due process,” he said. “We are a nation of laws, not a nation of tweets. Woe unto us if we allow that to become our new justice system.”Cuomo also said: “The Bible teaches perseverance, it teaches us to get off the mat. They broke my heart but they didn’t break my spirit. I want to take the energy that could have made me bitter and make us better.”TopicsAndrew CuomoNew YorkUS politicsDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      Chris Cuomo accused of sexual harassment days before CNN fired him

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      Chris Cuomo accused of sexual harassment days before CNN fired himLawyer says accuser came forward after New York’s AG office showed Cuomo took much more active role in helping brother Chris Cuomo was hit with a new allegation of sexual harassment days before CNN announced it was firing him amid an investigation into work he did defending his brother from similar harassment allegations.Chris Cuomo fired by CNN for helping brother Andrew fight sexual misconduct chargesRead moreAn attorney, Debra Katz, said on Sunday her client alleged “serious sexual misconduct” by Cuomo and had contacted CNN about the allegation on Wednesday.CNN suspended Cuomo earlier this week after details emerged about how he assisted his brother, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, as he faced sexual harassment allegations.CNN officials said “additional information has come to light” when it announced Chris Cuomo’s firing, but did not elaborate.Katz said the accuser decided to come forward after the New York attorney general’s office released evidence showing Cuomo had taken a much more active role than previously thought in strategizing and helping to craft a response to the allegations his brother was facing.When the initial allegations surfaced against Andrew Cuomo, Chris Cuomo told viewers he had “always cared very deeply about these issues”, Katz said.“Hearing the hypocrisy of Chris Cuomo’s on-air words and disgusted by his efforts to try to discredit these women, my client retained counsel to report his serious sexual misconduct against her to CNN,” Katz said in the statement.CNN was reviewing Chris Cuomo’s conduct following the new information. A law firm recommended his firing.“It goes without saying that these decisions are not easy, and there are a lot of complex factors involved,” CNN chief Jeff Zucker wrote in an email to CNN staff on Saturday.Cuomo issued a statement on Twitter, calling the decision disappointing.“This is not how I want my time at CNN to end but I have already told you why and how I helped my brother. So let me now say as disappointing as this is, I could not be more proud of the team at Cuomo Prime Time and the work we did,” he said.The new misconduct allegation comes after a veteran TV executive, Shelley Ross, wrote a column for the New York Times in September saying Chris Cuomo groped her at a party 16 years ago, when they both worked for ABC News.Cuomo told the newspaper: “I apologized to her then, and I meant it.”TopicsAndrew CuomoUS politicsNew YorkCNNnewsReuse this content More

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      Chris Cuomo fired by CNN for helping brother Andrew fight sexual misconduct charges

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      Chris Cuomo fired by CNN for helping brother Andrew fight sexual misconduct chargesPrimetime anchor was suspended on TuesdayNetwork says ‘additional information’ has come to light CNN has fired the primetime anchor Chris Cuomo for trying to help his brother, the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, fight accusations of sexual misconduct which resulted in his resignation.How Chris and Andrew Cuomo’s on-air comedy routines compromised CNNRead moreAnnouncing the firing on Saturday, CNN said “additional information” had come to light. “Chris Cuomo was suspended earlier this week,” a statement said, “pending further evaluation of new information that came to light about his involvement with his brother’s defense.“We retained a respected law firm to conduct the review and have terminated him effective immediately. While in the process of that review additional information has come to light. Despite the termination, we will investigate as appropriate.”In a statement reported by the New York Times, Cuomo, 51, said: “This is not how I want my time at CNN to end but I have already told you why and how I helped my brother.“So let me now say as disappointing as this is, I could not be more proud of the team at Cuomo Prime Time and the work we did … I owe them all and will miss that group of special people who did really important work.”The CNN anchor tested a policy of not covering his brother in early 2020 when, during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic and with New York hard-hit, the two regularly spoke and joked on air.The scandal which engulfed Andrew Cuomo spread to his younger brother, who acknowledged offering advice when the governor faced the harassment charges that he denied but that ultimately led to his resignation in August.Chris Cuomo was then suspended on Tuesday, after the release of documentation collected during an investigation of Andrew Cuomo by the New York state attorney general, Letitia James.The information released by James showed how Chris Cuomo pressed sources for information on his brother’s accusers, reported to the governor’s staff and was active in helping shape responses to the charges.That information prompted loud calls for CNN to fire Cuomo.Marissa Hoechstetter, a victims’ rights advocate, tweeted: “As a survivor who has trusted CNN with my story, it is deeply disturbing that Chris Cuomo remains employed. “His unethical behavior – plus that of anyone giving him any info in the first place – should be disqualifying for a journalist. If they keep him on, they can’t be trusted.”Charlotte Bennett, an alleged victim of sexual misconduct by Andrew Cuomo, said: “Just like his older brother, Chris Cuomo used his time, network and resources to help smear victims, dig up opposition research, and belittle our credible allegations.“Anything short of firing Chris Cuomo reflects a network lacking both morals and backbone. Does CNN stand by journalistic integrity, or will it simply excuse his actions because Chris Cuomo drives ratings?”On Saturday, CNN took action.TopicsCNNAndrew CuomoUS politicsNew YorkUS televisionTelevision industrynewsReuse this content More