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In August, the Daily Devil’s Dictionary appears in a single weekly edition containing multiple items taken from a variety of contexts.
This week, we jump from French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal of a new law intended to produce electoral momentum in the run-up to the presidential election to Republican Senator Josh Hawley’s campaign to avoid dishonoring the great tradition of white supremacy. We then move on to congressional Democrats’ greater sense of loyalty to the military-industrial complex than to their elected president and also the military threat that China’s peaceful overtures in Africa appear to represent for the US. Finally, we look at the Financial Times’ realistic, but unorthodox reading of the global debt crisis.
Macron’s Revised Motto: Liberté (diminished), Egalité (Two-tiered) and Neutralité
It used to be that countries like Switzerland could claim the privilege of neutrality. The notion applied to political entities. President Macron of France has extended it to people in the name of combating “separatism,” the latest and deadliest sin against what he imagines to be republican integrity. Parliament is now deliberating on a bill designed literally to neuter the French by imposing neutrality as a behavioral norm. Macron sees the effort to inculcate and enforce “republican values” as the key to winning reelection in 2022.
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“Introduced by hardline French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, the bill contains a slew of measures on the neutrality of the civil service, the fight against online hatred, and the protection of civil servants such as teachers,” France 24 informs us. The New York Times explains that this “law also extends strict religious neutrality obligations beyond civil servants to anyone who is a private contractor of a public service, like bus drivers.”
Neutralité:
A legal concept that provides a pretext for targeting the Muslim community in France for failing to live up to republican standards, a requirement that not only judges people on their aptitude to adhere to a modern faith known as “republican principles” (which supersedes any other creed or philosophy a person may identify with), but also proclaims that those principles are universal and should be shared by any rational person anywhere in the world
The Context
The law voted by parliament on July 23 seeks to eliminate “separatism” by removing a few of the traditional liberties the French formerly enjoyed. It also seeks to foment a climate of suspicion against anyone who resists signing on to a behavioral code designed to protect members of the current secular order.
To ensure that some of Marine Le Pen’s xenophobic, anti-immigrant voters may be tempted to drift across to vote for Macron in next year’s election, the president has proposed a law clearly intended to demonstrate his personal pleasure in intimidating Muslims.
Radical Ideology According to Senator Josh Hawley
Republicans in the United States believe in freedom of expression so long as thought itself is controlled. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley understands that white exceptionalism is the unimpeachable foundation of the American way of life. “Over the past year, Americans have watched stunned as a radical ideology spread through our country’s elite institutions—one that teaches America is an irredeemably racist nation founded by white supremacists,” Hawley said. “We cannot afford for our children to lose faith in the noble ideals this country was founded on.”
Radical ideology:
The citing of any facts of history that might contradict the self-proclaimed normal and noble ideology of those who believe that the power structure they are a part of is predestined not only to rule the world, but also to restrict useful, objective knowledge of the world
The Context
When Hawley claims that we “have to make sure that our children understand what makes this country great, the ideals of hope and promise our Founding Fathers fought for, and the love of country that unites us all,” the key concept is “make sure.” This is the language not of education but of indoctrination, a characteristic traditionally associated with totalitarian regimes that mobilize whatever resources are required to “make sure” people toe the line.
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The idea of “making sure” that children “understand” should be seen as an aporia, a simple contradiction, since true understanding means appreciating what one cannot be sure of — in other words, of putting things in perspective. Hawley clearly wants to remove what he calls the “ideals” from their context. This is more about undermining than understanding.
There are similarities between Macron’s and Hawley’s approach to normalizing understanding and testing for loyalty.
The Democrats’ Competing Priorities
US President Joe Biden has claimed that transformative FDR-style reforms are his priority and opposed Donald Trump’s race to further bloat the defense budget. Biden’s party in Congress is implementing its own priorities, similar to Trump’s.
“One has to wonder what is even the point of a Senate Democratic majority if they’re going to not only continue Trump policies but work with Senate Republicans to undermine [Biden’s] priorities. Utterly pathetic,” tweeted Stephen Miles, executive director of Win Without War.
Priority:
Something political leaders want the public to believe is the first thing they wish to accomplish, even when they have no intention of implementing the stated policy and also expect it will not be implemented
The Context
During last year’s presidential campaign, Defense News reported that Biden said that “if elected president, he doesn’t foresee major reductions in the U.S. defense budget as the military refocuses its attention to potential threats from ‘near-peer’ powers such as China and Russia.” The website nevertheless suspected that “internal pressure from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, combined with pandemic-related economic pressures, may ultimately add up to budget cuts at a Biden Pentagon.”
In a comic historical twist, Biden did not propose a reduction in the defense budget, but instead a modest increase despite drawing down the US commitment in the Middle East. The Senate Armed Services Committee, with a majority of Democrats, applied its pressure not to reduce the budget, but to spend even more than Biden demanded. The only “internal pressure” came from one isolated progressive, outvoted by 25 Democrats and Republicans.
The moral of the story is clear. The president cannot run the country because even the policies he prefers (sincerely or insincerely) will be overturned by the all-powerful military-industrial complex that controls Congress. Defense is no longer about defending the nation, which is already extremely well defended. It’s about supporting the defense industries that are at the core of the economy and the focus of politicians’ attention. Spending freely on defense is the norm even in a nation that hates any spending other than consumer spending. The taxpayers will never complain, because they have been taught that producing arsenals that will never be needed is consistent with the belief in the “ideals of hope and promise our Founding Fathers fought for,” to quote Hawley again.
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As the wealth gap continues to grow and the effects of both the COVID-19 pandemic and a growing climate crisis have spread more misery across the nation, the Republicans and Democrats on the Armed Services Committee appear to blissfully ignore the observation of a former Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
The US Counters a Global Overture Threat
It goes without saying that, given the multiplicity of threats to “national security,” the US is supposed to be everywhere in the world as a military presence. For two decades, terrorism was the main pretext, but its attraction has faded, allowing other missions to emerge, especially in Africa.
“Now, in addition to fighting violent extremist groups, they have to counter Chinese and Russian overtures in a region where great powers are increasingly competing for access, influence, and resources,” writes Stavros Atlamazoglou in Business Insider
Overture:
Any initiative taken by a rival power in territories currently dominated by Western colonial and neocolonial powers, especially in regions where US troops are already present as a reminder that these are the West’s private hunting grounds
The Context
America’s hard power, its famed military might, appears to have a new challenge. This time it isn’t a foreign army, insurgents or terrorist cells. It is, as Atlamazoglou explains, something far more frightening: “Chinese aid, in the form of loans or infrastructure development,” part of “Beijing’s quest for natural resources and global legitimacy.” How dare the most populous nation on earth seek “natural resources and global legitimacy?” No one has called them off the bench to play the same game Western powers have excelled at for the past 500 years.
Then there is the Russian variant, which is more respectful of the well-established American model. “Russia sells arms and provides political advisors in addition to hunting for lucrative contracts for natural resources and other geopolitical benefits,” Atlamazoglou writes. The two former rivals have remained faithful to the methods developed in that golden age politicians remember as the Cold War.
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Atlamazoglou relies heavily on the testimony of John Black, a retired Special Forces warrant officer, who observes that American ambassadors need “to look at the country as a whole and take more risks, use [the US] military arm to effect real change within a country.” The stirring examples of Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya demonstrate how “real change” can take place when you accept to “take more risks.”
Black understands the risk, apparently viscerally: “China or Russia might not hesitate to work with a dictator with an abdominal [sic] human-rights record to further their geopolitical goals.” Could he have possibly meant “abominable?” Or does this describe a brutal regime that weaponizes diarrhea? Citing the US commitment to the rule of law, Black implies that the US would never cavort with a dictator possessed of an abominable human-rights record.
How did the usually serious Business Insider allow such an “abdominal” article to appear?
The Great Reset: The Effect of Coordination or Chaos?
The magnates of Davos recently agreed to mobilize their forces to implement what they call the “Great Reset,” ushering in a new golden age of socially responsible capitalism. All it requires is some concerted action under their leadership.
Gillian Tett, writing for the Financial Times, seems to envision a different scenario: “The total global debt is now more than three times the size of the global economy, since debt — and money — has expanded inexorably since 1971. It seems most unlikely this can ever be repaid just by growth; sooner or later — and it may be much later — this will probably cause a direct or indirect restructuring or a social or financial implosion.”
Restructuring:
The process by which the laws of inertia teach human beings with political and economic power, who believe they possess the intelligence capable of problem-solving, that such a belief can only be an illusion
The Context
Humanity finds itself struggling with a straightforward situation: multiple crises related to health, climate and an economy functioning on increasingly absurd principles. Theoretically, they can all be addressed through a harmonious global focus on rational resource management followed by intelligent decision-making. But history demonstrates on a daily basis that society has delegated decision-making to: first, individuals within nations (consumers and voters); second, nations (each competing one another); and third, those who govern the nations (theoretically, politicians whose sole aim is to hold onto power once they have acquired it and who are beholden to anyone who assists them in achieving that goal).
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In other words, the more universal the problem, the less likely it will be that it may be solved. Local and national crises continue to exist, but they have now become dominated by universal crises. The consumer economy and the quasi-democratic nation-states are structured, in terms of decision-making, in a way that makes any voluntary effort at restructuring impossible.
Not only do our economies and political systems need restructuring. Our thinking about who we are and how we function as a society needs some serious revision.
*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
August 4 marks the one-year anniversary of the explosion that rocked the port of Beirut. Today, thousands of Beirutis are marching to the site in memory of the victims and in peaceful protest at continued government inaction. As Lebanon wrestles with political paralysis, a rampant pandemic and a wrecked economy, the authorities have provided no answers. To date, no one in a senior position has been held accountable for the blast that killed 218 people, injured more than 7,000 and displaced over 300,000 as large parts of the capital were laid to waste.
Beirushima: What Lebanon Needs to Survive
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An FBI report from October last year (seen by Reuters at the end of July) concluded that the amount of ammonium nitrate left in the port warehouse by the time of the explosion constituted just one-fifth of the 2,754 tons seized by the authorities in 2013. The question the FBI did not ask was where the bulk of that shipment had gone. Arab Digest’s own account from July 20 suggests the likely destination: the regime forces of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. Sources claim that Assad’s ally Hezbollah moved the ammonium nitrate into Syria over the years.
Buttressing our analysis is the fact that no insurance claim has ever emerged from the supposed destination, Mozambique, for the undelivered fertilizer. The Israelis, we postulate, in hitting a Hezbollah weapons cache in the harbor, unintentionally triggered the blast.
No Concrete Evidence
A new investigation published by Human Rights Watch (HRW) links to over 100 documents related to the Rhosus and its cargo, some of which have not been previously published. Once again, more questions than answers are forthcoming, including over such key issues as whether the ammonium nitrate was really ever, as has been asserted, intended for Mozambique:
“The widely reported narrative regarding the arrival of the Rhosus, a Moldovan-flagged ship, in the port of Beirut in November 2013 carrying 2,750 tonnes of high-density ammonium nitrate is as follows: the ship’s cargo was ultimately bound for Mozambique; it entered Beirut’s port to load seismic equipment it was then meant to deliver to Jordan before traveling onward to Mozambique; the ship’s owner was a Russian national, Igor Grechushkin; and the owner of the ammonium nitrate on board, Savaro Limited, was a chemical trading company in the United Kingdom. Upon examination, however, it is not clear that any of these assertions are true.”
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The HRW report goes on to mention three possible reasons for the blast: that the explosion was caused when welding sparks caused a fire in hangar 12, igniting the ammonium nitrate; that the explosion was caused by an Israeli airstrike; or that the explosion was an intentional act by Hezbollah. The hypothesis that the explosion might have been caused by an Israeli attack that was not an airstrike is not one that is under official consideration, although in June, investigative judge Tarek Bitar told journalists that he was “80 percent certain” that the blast was not caused by an Israeli missile.
In July, we described how an Arab Digest member recalled the events of that day:
“Shortly after 6 pm, we heard a jet flying at low level from the west and an explosion from the direction of the port. A couple of minutes later came the deeper sound of a surface-to-surface missile followed by another explosion. The ground then shook violently — this turned out later to be the ammonium nitrate detonating — and we watched in disbelief the plume of smoke and debris soaring into the sky. The blast reached us a few seconds later, throwing us off our feet from the terrace into the flat and blowing in all the glass.”
For our member, it was a fortunate escape: bruised and cut, and astonished to find that, in the midst of the badly damaged flat, the internet was still working.
Inconclusive Conclusion
Now, a year on, there are still pressing questions about what caused the blast and who is responsible, questions that the suffering people of Lebanon deserve to have answers to. The second, and by far the most destructive explosion, occurred when a warehouse containing ammonium nitrate caught fire. A common explanation put about at the time was that the explosion had been caused by careless workers. But no concrete evidence has been brought forward to support that claim.
France had declared that it would conduct a major investigation. However, a French judge could not determine conclusively “whether the explosion was the result of an intentional security operation or whether it was the result of negligence in storing the ammonium nitrate and shortcomings that led to the devastating explosion.” According to Reuters, the FBI had arrived at the same inconclusive conclusion.
The French report raised the possibility of an attack — “an intentional security operation” — together with the claim that the explosion was an accident caused by negligence. The equivocation and failure to find answers didn’t prevent the French from patronizingly scolding the Lebanese. As the French ambassador in Beirut put it, “To all this country’s leaders, I want to say that your individual and collective responsibility is considerable, be brave enough to take action, and France will help you.”
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The first Lebanese judge investigating the blast was forced out in mid-February after he had attempted to charge cabinet ministers and the prime minister in office at the time of the explosion. A second judge has made virtually no headway against entrenched political elites whose central goal is to protect themselves and their fiefdoms while evading responsibility and the truth.
On July 14, Amnesty International called for the removal of immunity for senior politicians as well as government and military personnel: “The protesters’ demand is simple: let justice take its course. We stand with these families in calling on Lebanese authorities to immediately lift all immunities granted to officials, regardless of their role or position. Any failure to do so is an obstruction of justice, and violates the rights of victims and families to truth, justice and reparations.”
Despite pleas and protests by the families of the victims, justice is unlikely to be allowed to take its course. The judiciary itself is deeply compromised and beholden to numerous sectarian, business and political factions, a malignant legacy of Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war. As an article on Just Security forensically elucidates, “the corruptibility of the judicial system is no accident. Instead, the convoluted structure of the judiciary complements the structure of the rest of the political system — in that it facilitates impunity at the highest levels and protects those who have retained power in the aftermath of Lebanon’s civil war.”
Speculations Abound
In the absence of an independent investigation, with all the foot-dragging and obfuscation it entails, speculation abounds about what caused the explosion. There are those, including our member, who believe that what happened on August 4, 2020, was the unintended consequence of an Israeli attack on a Hezbollah weapons dump in the port. The cache was located adjacent to the warehouse holding the ammonium nitrate. The first blast, with its eerie resemblance to fireworks going off, set off the fire that caused the major blast which leveled the port and damaged much of Beirut.
The Arab Digest member, who is familiar with both the Israeli air force tactics and their consequences, is convinced it was a missile strike: “We compared notes with a friend who had observed the jet banking away from the attack and another friend who actually saw the surface-to-surface missile flash past her office window.” The member says that, according to detailed work done by Lebanese citizen activists in the wake of the attack, the ammonium nitrate aboard the Rhosus had landed in Beirut under a cover story in 2013.
The shipment was subsequently seized by port authorities. The supposition put forward by the activists is that it was then trucked to Syria by Hezbollah to provide the regime forces of Bashar al-Assad with the raw material for the improvised barrel bombs they began dropping on opposition-held cities having run short of conventional ammunition. The member quoted expert sources who estimated that over several years, the original 2,750 tons had been reduced to about 400 tons at the time of the blast, which is in line with the FBI’s findings.
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Richard Silverstein, who describes himself as a writer who “focusses on the excesses of the Israeli national security state,” wrote in his blog, Tikun Olam, just after the blast:
“A confidential highly-informed Israeli source has told me that Israel caused the massive explosion at the Beirut port earlier today which killed over 100 and injured thousands. … The source received this information from an Israeli official having special knowledge concerning the matter.
Israel targeted a Hezbollah weapons depot at the port and planned to destroy it with an explosive device. Tragically, Israeli intelligence did not perform due diligence on its target. Thus they did not know (or if they did know, they didn’t care) that there were 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in a next-door warehouse.”
Tikun Olam referred to comments of then-President Donald Trump who, in a hastily arranged press conference, said he had met with some of his “great generals” and “they seem to think it was an attack. It was a bomb of some kind.” His comments caused consternation at the Pentagon, with Silverstein arguing that Trump had let slip “highly classified information,” i.e., that the Israelis had informed Washington that they were going to carry out an attack on a Hezbollah weapons cache.
Silverstein, though a controversial figure, is viewed by some experts as a useful source on Israeli defense information that would otherwise be censored by the authorities. When contacted by Arab Digest, Silverstein thought it “not likely” that the Israelis would have used a fighter jet to carry out the alleged strike. He thought it too obvious and reckless. He pointed to the modus operandi used against Iranian targets where explosives were placed and then detonated remotely as a more likely approach. He said his source had not mentioned anything about using a fighter jet. “It might have been triggered by a drone,” Silverstein suggested.
But Silverstein was certain of the attack itself: It was carried out by the Israelis. His source, he said, had been contacted by a cabinet minister in the Netanyahu government (the “Israeli official having special knowledge”) shortly after the explosion. Silverstein told Arab Digest that he was “totally confident about the source.”
True Narrative
Should this version, or variations on it, be the true narrative, it is understandable why Hezbollah and Israel would not want it to see the light of day. Less understandable and puzzling is why major news outlets have not touched the story when it was presented to them by reputable sources. Part of the answer may lie in the fact that the sources, either for professional or personal security concerns, have not wanted to go on the record.
A truly independent investigation might answer the questions and uncover the truth. But for the Lebanese people, battered by an economic crisis and stalked by the COVID-19 pandemic, finding out what happened that terrible day in Beirut must join a disheartening queue. In a country that has for too long been abused by its political elites and used by foreign powers for their own purposes, seeking answers is a long and arduous task with little hope at its end that justice will be served.
*[This article was originally published by Arab Digest, a partner organization of Fair Observer.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
OpinionAndrew CuomoThe evidence is damning. If Cuomo had any self-respect, he’d resignMoira DoneganA 165-page report by the New York attorney general has found that the governor behaved in abusive, harassing, and illegal ways towards women Wed 4 Aug 2021 06.20 EDTLast modified on Wed 4 Aug 2021 10.55 EDT“We find all 11 women to be credible,” said Ann L Clark, at a press conference on Tuesday. Clark, an employment attorney, is one of the independent lawyers brought on to conduct New York attorney general Letitia James’s investigation into sexual harassment claims against governor Andrew Cuomo. Her statement was made as part of the release of a 165-page report by the attorney general’s office, a fact-finding investigation that determined that the governor had illegally abused and harassed women subordinates. The report corroborated accounts from almost a dozen women, including nine current and former employees of the governor’s office, one state trooper and one employee of the energy utility National Grid. The investigation found that Cuomo not only personally sexually harassed women, but that he created a hostile work environment and used his office in an attempt to silence and punish his accusers, all of which violate both federal and New York State civil rights laws. The report is the product of a months-long investigation, which included interviews with 179 people, a review of 74,000 documents and 11 hours of sworn testimony from Cuomo himself.Andrew Cuomo sexual harassment: the key testimony from the reportRead moreThe report confirms accounts from former aides, including Lindsey Boylan and Charlotte Bennett, who described a high-pressure environment (“rife with fear and intimidation,” in the words of the report) in which pleasing the governor was paramount, and where vulgar overtures, prying queries into their personal lives and unsolicited physical contact were common. The attorney general’s office lent credence to Boylan’s account of being harassed and forcibly kissed by the governor. The report also notes the copious evidence supporting the accusations made by Bennett, a young aide to whom the governor expressed sexual interest in unambiguous terms, asking if she was monogamous or if she slept with older men. Bennett’s account, the report says, matches the contemporaneous notes made by the officials she complained to, as well as her own statements to the press and near-contemporaneous texts she sent to friends and loved ones describing her distress at Cuomo’s behavior. The document also corroborates an account from an aide, whose identity has not been made public, who claims that the governor reached under her blouse and groped her breast at the governor’s mansion. That incident has been reported to Albany police.The James report also reveals new accusations against Cuomo. A female state trooper assigned to his security detail says he touched her stomach in one instance, and ran his finger down her spine while saying “Hey, you” in another. She says he kissed her on the cheek in front of her co-workers, an indignity that male troopers were not subjected to, and remarked that if she got married, it would decrease her sex drive. The trooper alleges that Cuomo, who is 63, told her he was looking for a girlfriend in her 20s who “could handle pain”. All of this happened while the trooper was responsible for Cuomo’s safety and protection.Cuomo has denied any wrongdoing, alleging in his own press conference on Tuesday that the attorney general’s investigation was biased, that he has never touched anyone inappropriately, that he offers unsolicited kisses to many people regardless of their sex, and that Bennett, the young aide who accused him of harassment, misinterpreted his comments due to her past history of sexual assault. The attorney general’s report said that investigators found Cuomo’s denials to “lack credibility and to be inconsistent with the weight of the evidence obtained during our investigation.”The report offers a damning and comprehensive view of Cuomo’s office culture, one in which women’s boundaries were crossed, the governor’s whims were indulged and employees’ dignity was routinely insulted for Cuomo’s amusement. But it almost didn’t get written at all. After the sexual harassment allegations against Cuomo became public earlier this year, the governor refused to resign – even as many state legislators and nearly all of New York’s congressional delegation urged him to do. When an independent investigation was proposed, Cuomo tried to assign the inquiry to judges he had appointed, possibly in an effort to influence its outcome. The elected attorney general had to fight for jurisdiction in order to deliver an independent investigation.Cuomo has clung to power over the past year even as his administration has been enveloped in other scandals. There was the revelation that during the pandemic he used state employees to help him write the splashy, self-congratulatory memoir for which he was handsomely paid. More disturbingly, there was the news that after a mistake in pandemic management cost thousands of senior citizens their lives, the governor’s office fudged the data on nursing home deaths, hoping to dodge responsibility. These scandals, too, point towards the same attitude by the governor as the alleged butt-grabbing and crude, adolescent boorishness outlined in the report: the idea that power is not a responsibility to others, but a license to do whatever he wants.The governor is not civically minded; he is not responsible with his office. He is reckless, disrespectful, misogynist and allergic to taking responsibility. He has demonstrated not merely an unfitness for power but a personal moral vacuity – an unwillingness to think of other people, of women, as equals, or to imagine his own actions as having consequences. Cuomo has a tremendous ego, but he seems to lack self-respect.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
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Andrew CuomoAndrew Cuomo sexual harassment: the key testimony from the reportEleven women have accused the New York governor of harassment – and investigators say their accounts have been corroborated Lauren ArataniTue 3 Aug 2021 16.18 EDTLast modified on Tue 3 Aug 2021 16.19 EDTMonths after New York governor Andrew Cuomo denied multiple allegations of sexual harassment, the New York attorney general’s office released a 165-page report on Tuesday that corroborates the allegations that made public over the last year.‘This is not who I am’: Cuomo issues denial after investigation finds he sexually harassed women – liveRead moreThe report details the allegations from 11 women. The investigators interviewed 179 witnesses, 41 of whom testified under oath, and obtained “thousands” of documents as evidence.Nine of the 11 women are current or former employees of the state government. Many share similar stories of fielding inappropriate questions from the governor and being subject to unwanted touching in his presence.While the report included testimony from women who had brief, unsettling encounters with the governor, investigators also talked to women who endured years of unwanted behavior while working under the governor.Below are their key accounts, which investigators say have been corroborated by interviews with witnesses and documents.Lindsey BoylanBoylan, a former executive at the Empire State Development Corporation (ESD) and deputy secretary for economic development, was the first woman to come out with allegations against Cuomo in December.The report said investigators were able to corroborate Boylan’s public allegations that she experienced multiple incidents of inappropriate touching and comments while working with Cuomo. Boylan joined the ESD in 2015 and climbed the ranks of the agency until she resigned in 2018.According to the report, Cuomo frequently commented on Boylan’s appearances and casually touched her waist, legs and back. Cuomo told Boylan she looked like a former girlfriend and sometimes called her by that girlfriend’s name.Boylan described an incident where, after a one-on-one meeting with the governor, she walked by him to leave and he stepped toward her and kissed her on the lips. The incidents were “deeply humiliating”, Boylan told investigators.“I think a lot of people are like: of course this happened to young women who have no power. Well, I was really senior, and I had worked my whole life to get to a point where I would be taken seriously, and I wasn’t being taken seriously,” she said. “I worked so hard to be a doll for the governor of New York.”The report also described retaliation against Boylan from the governor’s office, including leaking to the press confidential internal documents that negatively portrayed Boylan as a bad employee. The governor and his office also circulated among employees an op-ed that was ultimately not published that disparaged Boylan.Charlotte BennettBennett, who worked for Cuomo as an executive assistant until last fall, was the second woman who went public with allegations against the governor in February. Like Boylan’s allegations, investigators said in the report that they were able to corroborate the accusations Bennett had made public in the spring.Bennett described multiple inappropriate comments Cuomo made to her while she was employed by his office. Initially, she described seeing Cuomo as a father figure but later saw their interactions as inappropriate as he started asking her personal questions and making uncomfortable comments.She described a series of conversations that took place over two days in January last year. Cuomo complained to Bennett about how long it had been since he hugged anyone. Bennett said that she told Cuomo that he could hug his daughters, but he said “not like that – like a real hug”. He then said he was lonely and wanted a girlfriend.The governor also asked Bennett if she had ever been with older men and whether she thought age was significant in relationships. The governor told Bennett – who was 25 at the time – that he would have a relationship with someone who was “22 and up”.Bennett described feeling “really uncomfortable” but also described trying not to upset the governor.Executive assistant no 1A current aide to the governor, whose name has not been publicly released and who is referred to as “executive assistant no 1” in the report, told investigators of multiple incidents when Cuomo inappropriately touched her, along with comments and jokes he made about her personal life and relationships.She described several incidents when the governor touched her, including close hugs where Cuomo would run his hands up and down her back. After the governor asked to take a selfie with her in December 2019, she felt Cuomo grab her butt and rub it. In November, after a hug, the governor slid his hand up her blouse and groped her breast.The assistant said that the touching made her stressed and nervous to be around the governor, causing her physical reactions like hives on her neck. She told investigators that she believes the governor knew that she was nervous and was emboldened by it.The assistant said that she originally planned to take the groping incident “to the grave” but became emotional after Cuomo said at a press conference in March that he had never “touched anyone inappropriately”.Trooper no 1The report included two incidents that had not previously been reported. One involved an anonymous employee at the state’s health department who said Cuomo made sexually suggestive comments while she was performing a live Covid-19 nasal test on the governor.The second involves another anonymous employee, referred to as “trooper no 1” in the report, who, after first meeting Cuomo, was hired to join the state’s Protective Services Unit.The trooper, who has been with the PSU since 2018, described multiple incidents when Cuomo touched her or made inappropriate comments.Biden to comment on Cuomo as White House calls report findings ‘abhorrent’Read moreDuring the summer of 2019, Cuomo approached the trooper and kissed her on the cheek, she said.Cuomo also discussed age differences in relationship with the trooper. He asked the trooper, who was in her late 20s, how old she was, and responded: “You’re too old for me.”KaitlinThe governor met Kaitlin, whose last name has not been made public, at a fundraiser event that was hosted by the lobbying firm she was working for at the time, the report says. At the event, she introduced herself to the governor, who ended up pulling her into a “dance pose” for a photograph and told her that he was going to have her work for the state.Nine days later, Kaitlin received a voice message from the governor’s office inviting her to apply to a job, at the governor’s request. She told investigators she did not share her information with the governor’s office at the fundraising event nor did she express interest in a job to him or his staff at the event. She said the opportunity was presented to her because of her appearance.Kaitlin took the job at the governor’s office, where Cuomo would frequently make comments about her appearance and the appearance of other women. He would comment on her makeup or clothing.In one incident, Cuomo called Kaitlin into his office and asked her to look for car parts for him on eBay. She described feeling uncomfortable bending down to use his computer as she was in a dress and heels and Cuomo was directly behind her.TopicsAndrew CuomoUS politicsnewsReuse this content More
