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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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      New York might decriminalize sex work. But will it do so safely and responsibly? | Geoffrey Mak

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      New York might decriminalize sex work. But will it do so safely and responsibly?Geoffrey MakIn an odd twist, leftwing groups support a libertarian, free-market approach, while some sex trafficking survivors support a more cautious, regulated approach The New York state legislature is debating between two bills that decriminalize sex work. The bills agree on the need to decriminalize sex workers but offer very different approaches for doing so. The Stop Violence in the Sex Trades Act seeks to fully legalize the sex trade. The Sex Trade Survivors Justice and Equality Act, which is adapted from the Nordic model, would decriminalize sex workers while keeping in place laws penalizing pimps and clients.In an odd twist, the first bill, which takes a libertarian and free-market approach to sex work, is supported by leftwing groups including the Democratic Socialists of America. Sex trafficking survivor groups, political moderates and prosecutors have mostly supported the more cautious, regulated approach. I believe advocates for both bills want the best for sex workers. But the first approach – a blanket decriminalization of sex work, including of pimps and johns – may make sex workers less safe, not more.No one disputes that sex workers face serious and constant risk of violence, and that the status quo is unsustainable and unjust. Since sex work is illegal in all states except Nevada, sex workers – who are at high risk of violence by clients, pimps and the police – generally have no way to organize for better labor protections, or to report violence without risking incrimination. In other countries, decriminalizing sex workers has made them safer. Studies of Sweden and Northern Ireland found that even partial decriminalization reduced street prostitution, lowering client violence.Decriminalization also aims to break the vicious cycle of police violence, incarceration and deportation. “I have so many issues with the vice squad,” New York state senator Jessica Ramos, who co-sponsored the Stop Violence bill for full decriminalization, told me. She accuses the police of either doing too much or too little.When a Queens vice squad raided a Flushing massage parlor in 2017, a worker fell off a second-floor balcony and died. In 2018, police officers across New York, including members of a vice squad in southern Brooklyn, were arrested for providing protection for a sex trafficking ring. The ring operated across boroughs – including in the district Ramos represents, where mostly Latina sex workers, some of them undocumented immigrants, walk the streets.“People who are most often targeted for police harassment or arrests or for violence – due to or related to sex work – are women, poor people, people of color, immigrants and trans people,” Mark Mishler, the legislative director for New York state senator Julia Salazar, who sponsored the Stop Violence bill, told me.There’s some evidence that arrests of sex workers in New York might already be decreasing on their own. The NYPD cites an overall decline in prostitution-related arrests (including of buyers and pimps as well as workers) in recent years. Arrests went from 1,069 in 2019 down to 193 in 2021. In an emailed statement, an NYPD spokesperson told me, “The NYPD’s enforcement priorities shifted in early 2017, and have continued, leading to fewer arrests over recent years of sex workers for prostitution and a greater share of arrests of those who buy sex and promote sex for sale.”Nevertheless, advocacy for full decriminalization has conjoined itself with vast, increasing leftwing support for police abolition. Leftwing and sex workers’ groups have embraced the abortion rights slogan “My body, my choice,” readapting it to sex workers’ freedom to do whatever they choose with their bodies. Under the slogan “Sex work is work,” the DSA considers full decriminalization as “a central fight for the labor movement and for socialist feminism”.Perhaps. But a misguided legislative intervention can hurt more than help. In 2018, for example, Congress passed Fosta/Sesta, a law that banned online sex ads – inadvertently flushing more sex workers out into the streets, where rushed negotiations put them at even greater risk of client-perpetrated violence.The movement for full decriminalization is anti-discrimination, anti-carceral and anti-police. But what do its arguments have to say about the concrete reality of sex trafficking? The Stop Violence bill might be more ideologically photogenic, but its opponents worry that full decriminalization might provide loopholes – or a carte blanche – for sex trafficking, a prospect that supporters of the Stop Violence bill don’t seem to acknowledge.Alexi Meyers, a former prosecutor and a consultant for the partial decriminalization bill, told me that if the Stop Violence bill repeals a statute criminalizing “promoting prostitution” (which refers to pimps) at the felony level, it would take away “the bread and butter of trafficking cases”.In New York, sex trafficking laws look for material force – like drug use, physical violence, kidnapping by withholding someone’s passport, or the destruction of property – as evidence of sex trafficking. But force is often psychological, with consent manufactured.Cristian Eduardo, a Mexican immigrant and sex trafficking survivor, told me that his traffickers often made him believe that he was choosing the life. This was in 2015, when he lived in an apartment in Queens operated by traffickers who gave him food, housing and vital HIV medication – which they convinced him he couldn’t get elsewhere – in exchange for sex with whichever john they assigned him.“The sex buyers are often very violent and abusive,” Eduardo said about his years in trafficking. “I never knew what was going to happen. The only thing I knew was I was going to be used as an empty vessel.”He says that if had been asked in court if he had consented to his treatment, he probably would have said yes, at the time. “I didn’t know it was exploitation, I thought it was my own fault and my own choice,” he said.Meyers, who worked on trafficking cases at the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, added, “We don’t always have victims who are cooperative with prosecutors – whether they are so highly traumatized by what they’ve been through, or whether they are terrified of their trafficker.” For this reason anti-pimping statutes are all the more important; they are a way to get traffickers off the streets without having to prove in court that their victims were definitively coerced.Yet advocates for full decriminalization often seem blithely uninterested in this dilemma. When I asked Mishler, Julia Salazar’s legislative director, about trafficked workers who might be hesitant to testify against their traffickers for fear of violence or homelessness, he said, “That’s not our problem. The law is the law.”I put the same question to Mariah Grant, the research and advocacy director of the Sex Workers Project, which supports full decriminalization. “You aren’t going to arrest your way out of this problem,” she said. “What we need is money that is being wrongfully diverted towards trafficking cases – that, in fact, are not actually trafficking, but people who are adults consenting to work in the sex trades – to be instead moved towards social services.”But this stance – “not actually trafficking” – feels like willed ignorance, ethically lazy or naive in the extreme. Yes, trafficked sex workers need social services, but they also need laws, not ideals, to protect them. You can’t girlboss your way out of trafficking.According to the New York State Interagency Task Force on Human Trafficking, there were about 1,000 confirmed victims of sex trafficking in New York between 2007 and 2019, a number that Meyers told me is probably an undercount of the actual victims. If the Stop Violence bill passed, that number could go up. One 2013 study of 150 countries showed that, on average, countries where prostitution is legal reported larger human trafficking inflows. For instance, sex trafficking in Germany declined gradually through 2001, then – after sex work was decriminalized in 2002 – began to increase again.There are persuasive advantages to full decriminalization. Sex workers would be able to unionize. Third-party workers, like those operating phone lines or client screeners, could work without fear of being prosecuted as pimps, creating a safer workplace. An increased demand of buyers, once decriminalized, would give sex workers more bargaining power. A 2007 study in New Zealand has shown that after full decriminalization, almost 65% of sex workers found it easier to refuse clients, and 57% reported improved police attitudes towards sex workers.But even as “sex work is work,” the sex trade can’t be treated like any other service industry, because most service industries aren’t inextricably entangled with violence and organized crime. Any law decriminalizing sex workers needs to address the sex trade as a whole, and prioritize the needs of the most disadvantaged. It’s possible to reduce violence against sex workers while also protecting those in trafficking; partial decriminalization would accomplish that.“It’s just so sad that people are like, yes, sex work is empowering, sex work is work,” Eduardo said. “And I’m like, You are not fighting for the vulnerable when you’re not fighting for the ones who are in need. You’re fighting to give more power to those who already have it.”
      Geoffrey Mak is a New York-based writer
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      AOC calls Tucker Carlson ‘trash’ for saying she is not a woman of colour

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      AOC calls Tucker Carlson ‘trash’ for saying she is not a woman of colour‘You’re a creep, bro,’ says New York congresswoman after Carlson attacked Ocasio-Cortez in Fox News segment The Fox News host Tucker Carlson attacked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday night, claiming the US congresswoman was not a woman of colour.“She’s a rich entitled white lady,” he said.In return, the New York Democrat, popularly known as AOC, said: “This is the type of stuff you say when your name starts with a P and ends with dejo.”Dictionary.com defines pendejo as “a mildly vulgar insult for ‘asshole’ or ‘idiot’ in Spanish”.It’s Trump’s time to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth | Lloyd GreenRead more“Once again,” Ocasio-Cortez added, “the existence of a wife or daughters doesn’t make a man good. And this one is basura.”Basura is Spanish for “trash”.She also accused Carlson of sexual harassment.Ocasio-Cortez’s mother is from Puerto Rico, her father from the Bronx. She has described herself as a woman of colour.Carlson said: “No one ever dares to challenge that description, but every honest person knows it is hilariously absurd.“There is no place on Earth outside of American colleges and newsrooms where Sandy Cortez” – Carlson’s derisory nickname for the New York congresswoman – “would be recognized as a quote, woman of color, because she’s not!“She’s a rich entitled white lady. She’s the pampered obnoxious ski bunny in the matching snowsuit who tells you to pull up your mask while you’re standing in the lift line at Jackson Hole. They’re all the same. It doesn’t matter what shade they are.”The leading provocateur in Fox News’ evening line-up was discussing a book about Ocasio-Cortez, Take Up Space: The Unprecedented AOC, written by Lisa Miller, a reporter at New York magazine.Carlson said Miller’s book was “like a box of Fig Newtons. You know it’s wrong to open it, but the temptation is strong, and so we did.”As the media watchdog Mediate put it, several of the passages Carlson read were “fawning in nature and weave mundane videos AOC has posted online – such as her assembling Ikea furniture – into a grand narrative about her life”.In one passage, Carlson said, the congresswoman is described as “pointedly” saying into a camera, “I’m alone today”.“Is it just us or does that sound like an invitation to a booty call?” Carlson said.“Maybe one step from ‘What are you wearing?’ Either way it’s a little strange. It’s definitely over-sharing and yet, according to the book, over-sharing is the key to Sandy Cortez’s success.”Ocasio-Cortez wrote: “Remember when the right wing had a meltdown when I suggested they exhibit obsessive impulses around young women? Well now Tucker Carlson is wishing for … this on national TV.“You’re a creep, bro. If you’re this easy with sexual harassment on air, how are you treating your staff?”TopicsAlexandria Ocasio-CortezFox NewsRaceUS politicsDemocratsNew YorkPuerto RiconewsReuse this content More

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      It’s Trump’s time to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth | Lloyd Green

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      It’s Trump’s time to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truthLloyd GreenA New York judge has ruled Trump will have to testify in his fraud investigation, leaving Trump sweating and his investors shaking their heads Donald Trump’s bad luck continues. On Thursday afternoon, Arthur Engoron, a Manhattan judge, gave the thumbs up to subpoenas issued to Trump, favorite child Ivanka, and Donald Trump Jr, by Tish James, New York’s attorney general. The court’s ruling follows a decision by Trump’s accountants to walk away from the one-term president and disavow years of financial statements issued by his company.Much as the Trump trio tried, they could not shut down James’s investigation into the Trump Organization’s business practices, which could lead to a civil suit by James. Unlike a criminal prosecution, a civil action comes with a lower burden of proof for the government. At the same time, civil lawsuits can drag on – like right into 2024. Barring a stay, Trump and his two children have been ordered to appear at deposition within 21 days.Trump and two eldest children must testify in New York case, judge rulesRead moreIf they tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, who knows what liability may result? On the other hand, if they invoke their right to remain silent, they will probably be portrayed as criminals.“You see, the mob takes the fifth,” Trump observed on the campaign trail in 2016. “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the fifth amendment?”Time sure flies. And if the Trump family refuses to appear at deposition or simply stays mum when grilled, they risk being charged with contempt, a distinction presently held by Steve Bannon, Trump’s White House counselor and 2016 campaign guru.At this moment, Trump must be sweating while his lenders have to be shaking their collective heads. How much is Trump worth and how bad can things get are no longer hypothetical issues. In the absence of operative financial statements, restructurings and bank-called defaults have spilled into the realm of the real.As one Trump insider confided: “Hey, this might be serious. Could Donald Trump [and his business] be screwed? I don’t know, but I’m not as confident as I once was in saying, ‘No’.”Meanwhile, 2024 Republican presidential aspirants are likely stifling a collective smirk. Trump’s legal woes stand to broaden the Republican party’s presidential field, and for some it is downright personal.For Mike Pence, Trump’s hapless vice-president, these recent developments may well trigger a sense of schadenfreude. It wasn’t that long ago when Trump’s loyalists came with makeshift gallows for Pence as they stormed the Capitol, and Trump said nothing to deter the mob. Instead, he demanded loyalty from his No 2.As for Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, Trump’s troubles could not come at a better time. Trump has all but called DeSantis a coward for refusing to say whether he was vaccinated. Beyond that, Florida’s recent per capita Covid mortality rate is the seventh highest in the US, and DeSantis is having a hard time denouncing neo-Nazi violence.“So what I’m going to say is these people, these Democrats who are trying to use this as some type of political issue to try to smear me as if I had something to do with that,” the Sunshine state governor declared. “We’re not playing their game.”To be sure, Trump’s Maga base would stick with him through thick-and-thin. The party’s deep-pocketed donors are a different story. Trump may have delivered them a trove of tax cuts and ambassadorships, but he’s emotionally draining.Beyond that, his antics in the run-up to the 2020 Georgia runoff elections cost the Republicans control of the Senate. There are reasons Mitch McConnell rejects Trump’s lie that the election was stolen and is seeking to bypass the 45th president.Thursday’s ruling was scathing. At one point, the court concluded that the attorney general had uncovered “copious evidence of possible financial fraud”. Elsewhere, the judge excoriated Trump & Co for their flight to fantasy and fiction, invoking Alice in Wonderland, 1984 and Kellyanne Conway all in a single sentence.“The idea that an accounting firm’s announcement that no one should rely on a decade’s worth of financial statements that it issued based on numbers submitted by an entity somehow exonerates that entity and renders an investigation into its past practices moot is reminiscent of Lewis Carroll (‘When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said … it means just what I chose it to mean – neither more nor less’); George Orwell (‘War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength’); and ‘alternative facts.’”In the past, Trump managed to weather storms surrounding his finances and credibility. Trump University did not stop the ex-reality show host’s political ascent. What happens next remains to be seen.Right now, Joe Biden’s poll numbers are in the low 40s, inflation is on the loose, and Nancy Pelosi is poised to lose the speaker’s gavel. Against that tableau, Trump poses a distraction from Republican ambitions, an unwelcome detour from anticipated outcome.
      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York. He was opposition research counsel to George HW Bush’s 1988 campaign and served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
      TopicsDonald TrumpOpinionUS politicsDonald Trump JrIvanka TrumpMike PenceKellyanne ConwayNew YorkcommentReuse this content More

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      Donald Trump’s legal woes threaten to engulf him as accountants abandon ship

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      Donald Trump’s legal woes threaten to engulf him as accountants abandon shipMazars’ cutting ties with ex-president mark significant step in New York investigation of his financial affairs, among 19 current cases The news that the longtime accounting firm for the Trump Organization has cut ties with the company and retracted 10 years of its financial statements is a new and serious blow to Donald Trump’s increasingly frenzied battle to fend off the legal investigations that are rapidly engulfing him.The revelation that Mazars USA last week ended its relationship with the Trump family comes at a perilous moment for the former president as he strives to protect himself, his family and his business from legal threats that are now coming thick and fast.A Guardian tally this month found that Trump was facing a total of 19 legal challenges, six of which involve alleged financial irregularities.By withdrawing its stamp of approval from the documents, Mazars leaves Trump potentially exposed to substantial legal and financial trouble.The papers, known as statements of financial condition, were used by Trump and his family business to attract and secure hundreds of millions of dollars in loans. They are also at the centre of an escalating investigation by the New York state attorney general, Letitia James.Last month James tightened the screws on Trump and the Trump Organization by releasing details in a filing of several instances involving golf courses, real estate and other assets where the family had allegedly “falsely and fraudulently valued multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for economic benefit”.In a letter dated 9 February, Mazars’ general counsel, William Kelly, told the Trump Organization that the annual financial statements it had prepared for the family business between 2011 and 2020 were no longer reliable.The accountants said they had based their decision partly on their own investigation into Trump’s finances and on the “totality of the circumstances”, concluding that “we are not able to provide any new work product to the Trump Organization”.On the back of James’s latest attack, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and an ex-vice president of the Trump Organization, told the Guardian that in his opinion “the House of Trump is crumbling”.James’s investigation is one of the most advanced and potentially dangerous of all the 19 legal actions bearing down on Trump. The inquiry is being pursued on both civil and criminal lines.James is working in tandem with a separate criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg. That inquiry is also looking into whether Trump and his family concern defrauded lenders or underpaid taxes by falsely representing his assets.The disclosure that Mazars had broken off relations with Trump was included in a new court filing from James on Monday as part of her ongoing attempt to force Trump and his two eldest children, Donald Jr and Ivanka, to testify under subpoena.Trump has consistently denied financial impropriety and has attempted to cast doubt on James’s investigation by denouncing it as a partisan witch-hunt. James is a Democrat, while Trump won the presidency in 2016 as a Republican.The Trump Organization said it was “disappointed” by Mazars’ decision but tried to spin the development in a positive light. It selectively cited a line in the Mazars letter that said that “we have not concluded that the various financial statements, as a whole, contain material discrepancies”, adding that the comment rendered the James and Bragg investigations “moot”.As Trump’s legal and financial woes deepen, he is also being assailed by a flurry of bad news surrounding the congressional investigation into the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. Trump, who is at the centre of the House select committee inquiry given that his “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from him drew thousands of his supporters to the Capitol building that day, has been trying to persuade his closest advisers not to cooperate.This week it was revealed that John Eastman, a conservative law professor who was integral to attempts to persuade the then vice president, Mike Pence, to delay certification of Joe Biden’s victory on January 6, has handed over 8,000 pages of emails to the committee.It has also become known that Rudy Giuliani, who as Trump’s lawyer was a key figure in the campaign to overturn the presidential election results, has opened a dialogue with the committee that could see him testifying in some form.TopicsDonald TrumpNew YorkUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      Blue states are rolling back mask rules – but experts warn it’s too soon

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      Blue states are rolling back mask rules – but experts warn it’s too soonThe lifting of mandates is coming at a time when the CDC says a vast majority of the country is still seeing high Covid transmission Several US states, many of them governed by Democrats, began rolling back mask mandates this week, a move public health experts warn could set back progress battling Covid.On Wednesday, Massachusetts, Illinois, New York and Rhode Island joined California, Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey and Oregon in lifting mask mandates for some public places.The wave of relaxations comes after months of private meetings among state leaders and political focus groups after the November elections, according to reports. “Now, it’s time to give people their lives back,” Sean Maloney, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, tweeted in support of New York suspending its indoor mask-or-vaccine mandate.Covid-era Americans are using public transit less and having more car crashes Read moreYet the lifting of rules has not been universally applauded and is coming at a time when the vast majority of the country (99%) is still seeing high transmission of the virus, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Public polls show consistent support for mask mandates and other precautions, and experts say the time to relax precautions is not here yet – and acting prematurely could prolong this wave.“In my view, it’s too soon. I feel like we’re anticipating too much,” said Justin Lessler, a professor of epidemiology at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. “We’re being too confident that things are going to keep going the direction that they have been going.”The CDC’s director Rochelle Walensky also recently said that “now is not the moment” to drop masks in public, although the agency is reportedly weighing changes to its guidance on masks.While Covid cases have dropped from Omicron’s record-shattering peak, the US still has an average of more than 230,000 cases each day – similar to the height of last winter’s wave – and more than 2,300 people are dying from Covid each day, according to the CDC. While hospitalizations are beginning to fall, 80% of hospitals are still under “high or extreme stress”.Treatments, including antivirals and monoclonal antibodies, that keep Covid from progressing to serious illness and death are still in short supply throughout the country. Children under the age of 5 are not yet eligible for vaccines, while less than a quarter of kids ages five to 11 are fully vaccinated.“We have hundreds of thousands of people dying, we have millions who’ve been hospitalized and we have an unknown number who have long Covid and who will get long Covid as we roll back what little mitigation we have,” said Julia Raifman, assistant professor at Boston University School of Public Health and creator of the Covid-19 US state policy database.“Saying things are normal undercuts us in getting more people vaccinated and in helping people wear masks, because transmission actually remains quite high,” Raifman said. “The best way to help people think things are more normal is to reduce the amount of virus with the mitigation measures that we have.”The failure to set measures on when to drop or reinstate precautions “starts from the top”, including the CDC and the White House, Raifman said. “The whole of the pandemic response is being mismanaged, and only better leadership can help us come together to better address it.”Anthony Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser, says the US is leaving the “full blown” phase of the pandemic. In September, he said controlling the pandemic meant having fewer than 10,000 cases a day.“This is not a declaration of victory as much as an acknowledgment that we can responsibly live with this thing,” said the New Jersey governor, Phil Murphy, who is also a key leader of the National Governors Association. Governors have reportedly urged Biden to “move away from the pandemic”.Many states – including Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Oregon, New Jersey and Rhode Island – are also set to lift school mask mandates. California is considering changes to the rules on school masks, while Illinois and New York will keep theirs for now. The governor of Pennsylvania lifted the school mask rule last month.Teachers’ unions have joined health experts in calling for science-based recommendations in order to keep educators and students safe, and to keep the virus from forcing further school closures caused by worker shortages.“I worry about taking off measures just because cases are trending down,” Lessler said. “At least some of the rate of decrease has to do with what little we’re doing to try to control transmission, and by stopping these measures – both directly and in the message it sends about the risk of the virus – you slow that down-trend.”A new variant could also emerge and change the situation yet again, he said. “We’ve time and time again been surprised by new variants.”Lifting measures too early and slowing the decrease in cases can result in “a lot of unnecessary cases and deaths that you might have avoided simply by waiting a few weeks”, Lessler said.“And if we change what we’re doing substantially, we may not get there, or it may take us longer to get there than anticipated.”TopicsCoronavirusOmicron variantDemocratsUS politicsCaliforniaNew YorkOregonnewsReuse this content More