New York

Sherry Vill remembers feeling embarrassed and stuck as the New York governor Andrew Cuomo “manhandled” her and came on to her in her own home, in front of her husband and son.“He towered over me,” she said during a press conference on Monday. “There was nothing I could do.”Vill, 55, met Cuomo in May 2017, when he visited her suburban house near Rochester, New York, while surveying flooding damage in the area. Hers is the latest in a series of allegations detailing a pattern of sexual misconduct by the now infamous chief of state.Vill recalled Cuomo holding her hand, forcibly grabbing her face, aggressively kissing her cheeks and calling her beautiful. The unwanted advances made her uncomfortable, especially around her family and neighbors.She later received a letter and pictures from the governor, addressed only to her, and a personal invitation to attend one of his local events.“The whole thing was so strange and inappropriate, and still makes me nervous and afraid because of his power and position,” Vill said.Cuomo’s office did not immediately return a request for comment, but his administration has so far generally denied any inappropriate touching by the governor despite a swathe of accusations from multiple women about his behavior.Letitia James, New York attorney general, has now tapped a former acting US attorney and an employment discrimination lawyer to probe the sexual harassment allegations, while many of the state’s high-profile Democrats have already said that Cuomo should resign.“Due to the multiple, credible sexual harassment and misconduct allegations, it is clear that Governor Cuomo has lost the confidence of his governing partners and the people of New York,” said Chuck Schumer, Senate majority leader, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in a joint statement earlier this month.Cuomo is also facing widespread criticism for how he handled the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, despite once being heralded as a hero and Democratic darling.His administration is currently being investigated for how it reported nursing home deaths from Covid-19 and is under fire for prioritizing Cuomo’s family members for then hard-to-access coronavirus tests.Another woman, Anna Ruch, previously described a similar experience to Vill’s in 2019, when she said Cuomo put his hand on her bare lower back, touched her face and asked to kiss her.Multiple current and former aides have now outlined inappropriate interactions with the governor, even as he publicly admonished the “pervasive poison of workplace sexual harassment” and ardently defended workplace protections amid the #MeToo movement.Lindsey Boylan, a former economic development official, published an essay in February about how she felt Cuomo “would go out of his way to touch me on my lower back, arms and legs”. She recalled a number of his vulgar comments – including a suggestion that they play strip poker – and described her shock when, during a visit to his office, he kissed her on the lips.“Governor Andrew Cuomo has created a culture within his administration where sexual harassment and bullying is so pervasive that it is not only condoned but expected,” Boylan wrote. “His inappropriate behavior toward women was an affirmation that he liked you, that you must be doing something right.”Charlotte Bennett, a former executive assistant and health policy advisor in her 20s, told the New York Times that she felt Cuomo – who asked her invasive and pointed questions about her sex life, including whether she had ever slept with older men – was grooming her for a sexual relationship.“I understood that the governor wanted to sleep with me, and felt horribly uncomfortable and scared,” Bennett said. “And was wondering how I was going to get out of it and assumed it was the end of my job.”Alyssa McGrath, who works for the governor’s office, says Cuomo mixes “flirtatious banter with more personal comments”, and recounted one time when she caught him peeping down her shirt, the New York Times reported.Another current aide, who has remained anonymous, accused Cuomo of fondling her under her blouse at his executive mansion – conduct that could result in a misdemeanor sexual assault charge, according to the Albany Times Union. More

“The governor’s health is fine, but he is going to resign within the hour.”Those are the words that Hillary Clinton, then a senator from New York, heard over the phone in a 2008 call announcing the imminent downfall of the sitting governor, Eliot Spitzer, in a prostitution and alleged money laundering scandal.“Well, what is the reason causing him to resign?” Clinton asked, according to David Paterson, who would then succeed Spitzer as governor and who was in charge of breaking the news.“I started to speak and then held my breath,” Paterson recounts in his memoir, “because I thought, ‘How do you explain a sex scandal to Hillary Clinton?’”The implosion of current New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s career in a double scandal involving sexual harassment allegations and the misreporting of Covid deaths inside nursing homes marked a sudden turn for Cuomo, a popular politician who just months earlier had won national admiration and international praise for his handling of the pandemic.But in a slightly longer view, the spectacle of a New York governor’s career spontaneously combusting in a sordid haze of sex allegations and possible criminality might appear more routine than shocking.Counting the demise of Paterson himself, who exited the governor’s mansion under allegations of witness tampering in a staffer’s domestic abuse case and the improper solicitation of gifts, Cuomo is the third consecutive New York governor to land with extreme flair on the front pages of the New York City tabloids – and possibly to be ejected from office.Paterson denied wrongdoing in the aide’s case and was not charged, but he was fined for lying under oath about accepting free World Series tickets. Spitzer was never criminally charged. Cuomo has denied wrongdoing and vowed not to resign, as most every prominent local politician has called on him to do.While the consecutive scandals involve a range of alleged offenses of varying degrees of seriousness, the overall streak is impressive, said Doug Muzzio, a professor of political science at City University of New York’s Baruch College.“First of all, the current scandal is not the first, not the second, not the third – but many scandals in a row,” Muzzio said. “It’s not only the governors, it is the legislators. If there were a contest between – a stakes for who was the most legislatively and executively corrupt, I don’t know, New York would be right up there.”Other states have registered stiff competition. In 2018 the governor of Missouri, Republican Eric Greitens, resigned under serious sexual assault charges that he denied; Greitens is now said to be preparing a US Senate run. The sitting governor of Virginia, Democrat Ralph Northam, admitted to wearing blackface in the 1980s but resisted pressure to resign; one of his recent predecessors, Republican Bob McDonnell, was convicted in 2014 on federal corruption charges and sentenced to prison, only to have the conviction vacated by the US supreme court.“Scandal and corruption in governor’s positions is far from unheard of,” said Robert Spitzer, a political science professor at the State University of New York at Cortland who is not related to the former governor. “I would just mention the state of Illinois, which had four successive governors serve jail time. That’s quite a record.”Just a month ago, it did not appear as if Cuomo were likely to keep New York in the running in the corruption sweepstakes. He had published a memoir about leadership during the pandemic, his daily televised updates on the crisis had won an Emmy and his popularity had run unusually high for all three of his terms.But after an aide was caught on tape admitting the manipulation of Covid death numbers, the state attorney general announced an investigation, and soon afterwards multiple women stepped forward to accuse Cuomo of sexual misconduct.Most of the allegations against Cuomo and his predecessors involve essentially individual acts, said Muzzio, but “there must be an institutional element to it”.“Leadership in New York is never calm,” he said. “There are too many vocal competing interests, there are too many vocal competing interests with money, and it’s a perpetual brawl with periods of calm.“But there’s always some form of conflict.”The Spitzer scandal started quietly, with a bank connected with Spitzer flagging large transfers as suspicious activity that could violate federal money laundering restrictions. Investigators would later allege that Spitzer spent tens of thousands of dollars on prostitutes, ultimately as “Client 9” with a service called the Emperor’s Club VIP with rates of $1,000 an hour.As a former state attorney general and top prosecutor, Spitzer’s alleged criminality left him open to charges of rank hypocrisy and fatally damaged his ability to lead. But the sum of the allegations facing Cuomo could constitute an even deeper violation of the public trust, analysts said.“I think taken together it does seem as though they are more serious,” Spitzer, the political scientist, said of Cuomo’s alleged misconduct. “Because you’ve got two different concerns, each of which could be the basis for calls for resignation. So put them together and I think the degree of seriousness is greater.“He’s facing quite the whirlwind as a result.”Multiple state investigations into Cuomo’s conduct are expected to be revealed this spring, at which point the governor’s political fate could be sealed.While sexual misconduct charges against governors in the past have animated a lot of popular interest, said Muzzio, Cuomo’s conduct in the nursing home deaths case could pose the greater threat to his public standing over the long term.“The nursing home situation is really serious, and that’s where the attorney general first exposed him,” said Muzzio. “And that’s a big danger for him now.” More

The coronavirus vaccination czar for New York governor Andrew Cuomo made appeals for political support for the embattled politician, prompting ethical concerns, according to multiple media reports Sunday.New York’s “vaccination czar”, longtime Cuomo aide Larry Schwartz, reportedly pivoted in at least one telephone conversation with a county executive from a discussion of vaccination policy directly to an appeal for support for Cuomo.Schwartz has denied mixing political and policy calls or acting improperly.Cuomo, the state’s governor since 2010, is in a fight for his political life under the weight of a half-dozen sexual misconduct allegations and a scandal over the deliberate misreporting of Covid deaths in nursing homes.Both US senators from New York and most of the congressional delegation have called on Cuomo to resign, as prosecutors investigate the charges against the three-term governor.“There is no way I resign,” Cuomo said last week. The governor has denied all allegations of sexual misconduct. He is up for re-election in 2022.One county executive has already filed a preliminary report with state attorney general Letitia James of a possible ethics violation by the Cuomo administration in the Schwartz matter, according to reporting in the Washington Post and New York Times.“At best, it was inappropriate,” an unnamed executive told the Post of Schwartz’s mixing discussions of vaccination policy and Cuomo’s political future. “At worst, it was clearly over the ethical line.”At least two other county executives reported a close juxtaposition of phone conversations about vaccine policy with other conversations with Schwartz about supporting Cuomo.Schwartz served as the governor’s top aide for four years during Cuomo’s first administration and was called back into service after the outbreak of the coronavirus emergency.He denied inappropriate conversations with county-level officials; he acknowledged he made calls but said he did so as a long-time friend of Cuomo and did not discuss vaccines in them. “I did nothing wrong,” Schwartz told the Washington Post. “I have always conducted myself in a manner commensurate to a high ethical standard.”With the most influential Democrats in the state already having turned on Cuomo as his third term wanes, the governor’s political fate may be beyond the ability of county-level officials to decide.The rollout of vaccines in New York state has roughly tracked the national average. The state endured one of the worst and deadliest outbreaks of Covid-19 early in the pandemic, with Cuomo’s clear daily communication at the time about the threat winning him praise, especially in contrast with former president Donald Trump.But outgoing New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, who has for years been locked in a personal feud with Cuomo, was among those criticizing Albany for not doing enough to get vaccine doses to the city.“We don’t get our fair share of vaccines for this city,” De Blasio told CBS News’ Face the Nation program on Sunday. “We’re vaccinating people not just from the city, but also from the suburbs, surrounding states.”De Blasio predicted that Cuomo would resign under pressure from an impeachment inquiry that was opened by the state assembly judiciary committee last week.“He is used to getting things his way, and it has been almost an imperial governorship,” De Blasio said. But the folks in this state and the political leadership don’t believe him anymore. He doesn’t have any credibility. I think an impeachment proceeding will begin, and I think he will be impeached, and perhaps right before that he’ll decide to resign.”Nearly 6,000 people in New York state tested positive for coronavirus on Saturday, and 62 people died.The Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post joined most of the state’s Democratic congressional delegation in calling on Cuomo to resign in an editorial.“Simply put: Any fair effort to get to the bottom of the avalanche of sexual-harassment allegations could take months – whereas legislators already have all the evidence they need to move to impeach Governor Cuomo immediately for his nursing-home horrors,” the paper said.At the height of the early coronavirus crisis, while Cuomo’s tone and leadership struck a defining contrast with Trump, the latest allegations against the Cuomo administration evoked a different kind of unflattering association with Trump.The former president explicitly tied coronavirus aid for states on the willingness of governors to demonstrate political fealty to him. Now county executives allege that a Cuomo aide has hinted at a similar tie.Among those who caught the association was Donald Trump Jr, who tweeted on Sunday afternoon: “Andrew Cuomo is everything the media pretended Trump was times about 1000.” More

An aide to Andrew Cuomo says the New York governor groped her in the governor’s residence, marking the most serious allegation among those made by a series of women against the embattled Democrat, according to a report published in a newspaper Wednesday.The Times Union of Albany reported that the woman, who was not identified, was alone with Cuomo when he closed the door, reached under her shirt and fondled her. The newspaper’s reporting is based on an unidentified source with direct knowledge of the woman’s accusation. The governor had summoned her to the Executive Mansion in Albany, saying he needed help with his cellphone, the newspaper reported.The three-term governor faces harassment allegations from five other women, including former aide Charlotte Bennett. The 25-year-old’s attorney, Debra Katz, said in a statement released Wednesday evening that the latest allegations are “eerily similar” to Bennett’s own story.Bennett has said she was summoned to the Capitol on a weekend and left alone with Cuomo, who asked her for help with his cellphone. She has said Cuomo asked about her sex life and propositioned her.“The governor’s sexual harassment, which Charlotte Bennett reported, was buried by his aides and never properly investigated,” Katz’s statement said. “Because of their enablement, another young woman was left in harm’s way.”The woman whose account was reported by the Times Union also indicated that Cuomo had touched her and made flirtatious comments on multiple occasions. According to the newspaper, her allegations came to light as Cuomo staffers watched the governor’s 3 March press conference, his first after initial sexual harassment claims made in late February.In it, he denied ever touching a woman inappropriately. The aide subsequently became emotional, and told a female supervisor who approached her about her encounters with the governor. At least one supervisor reported the allegation to an attorney in the governor’s office Monday, the newspaper reported.Prior to Wednesday’s report, the allegations against Cuomo include a combination of claims that he made the workplace uncomfortable for young women, ranging from flirtatious comments to a nonconsensual kiss.At least five accusers – Bennett, Lindsey Boylan, Anna Liss and Karen Hinton – worked for the governor in Albany or during his time in Bill Clinton’s cabinet. Another, Anna Ruch, told the New York Times that she met Cuomo at a friend’s wedding.The three-term governor has denied inappropriately touching anyone, but said he is sorry if he made anyone uncomfortable and didn’t intend to do so.“As I said yesterday, I have never done anything like this. The details of this report are gut-wrenching,” Cuomo said through a spokesperson Wednesday evening. “I am not going to speak to the specifics of this or any other allegation given the ongoing review, but I am confident in the result of the attorney general’s report.”The state attorney general, Letitia James, has put together an investigative team to probe Cuomo’s workplace conduct. The governor has called on lawmakers and the public to await the results of that investigation. Federal investigators are also scrutinizing how his administration handled data concerning Covid-19 outbreaks at nursing homes.Cuomo has repeatedly maintained he won’t resign.“How can we allow this man to lead our state? We must impeach,” Zohran Kwame Mamdani, a Democratic assembly member, tweeted Wednesday night.The Republican assembly member Mike Lawler on Twitter called Cuomo “a sexual predator” who should be charged.Both lawmakers had previously called for Cuomo’s impeachment. More