NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — The New York attorney general's office launched its sexual harassment probe with a “predetermined narrative" in mind, lawyers for Gov. Andrew Cuomo argued Friday, while claiming an aide who accused the politician of groping her lied about what happened.
In a virtual briefing Friday afternoon, attorneys Rita Glavin and Paul Fishman responded to the allegations detailed in a report James’ office released Tuesday, including claims that Cuomo sexually harassed a state trooper assigned to his detail and suggested he and a former aide play strip poker together.
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Read their rebuttals below:
On the claims of ‘Executive Assistant #1’
An aide to Cuomo who accused the governor of groping her breast at the Executive Mansion in Albany last year filed a criminal complaint against him this week, the Albany County Sheriff’s office confirmed Friday.
Glavin on Friday afternoon maintained the woman’s claim was “false.”
“The documentary evidence does not support what she said, and what is disturbing to me is that the two investigators did not show that evidence to you. They ignored it,” Glavin maintained. “Ask them why.”
Emails sent by the aide on Nov. 16 — the date around which James’ report says the incident took place — showed that she was “joking… eating snacks, and she even offered to stay longer at the Mansion when her work was done,” Glavin said, adding that the aide “wasn’t just working with the governor, she was working with other staffers.”
The aide also told investigators Cuomo slammed his office door shut before he groped her — an incident Glavin claimed couldn’t have happened without notice.
“Because of the age of the Mansion, a door being slammed shut echoes,” Glavin said. “The report doesn’t say that anyone corroborated hearing a door slammed”
Glavin also claimed several aides to Cuomo — including secretary to the governor Melissa DeRosa — were at the Mansion that day, but said investigators did not question them about the incident.
On claims made by the New York state trooper assigned to Cuomo’s detail
A trooper assigned to protect Cuomo told investigators the governor frequently directed “flirtatious” and “creepy" comments toward her, with the report stating he “sexually harassed her on a number of occasions.”
The report claimed Cuomo “ran his finger down the center of her spine midway down her back, and said to [her], ‘Hey you.’” It also claimed the governor asked if he could kiss the trooper — before kissing her on the cheek — in 2019, and “[ran] his hand across her stomach, from her belly button to her right hip, while she held a door open for him at an event" not long after she was hired.
Glavin on Friday said Cuomo would “address that allegation himself.”
“I can’t give you a timeline, but I know he wants to do it soon,” she said in response to a reporter’s question about when the governor would do so.
The report also claimed Cuomo hired the trooper despite the fact that she hadn’t served on the New York State Police force for three years, as required for his detail.
Glavin maintained the governor’s office waived the requirement for the trooper because Cuomo “had been complaining about the lack of diversity on his detail for some period of time,” not because he was attracted to her.
“As the governor related to the investigators, he had met this trooper,” she said. “He thought she was impressive, in their meeting, and he said, ‘I don’t understand, like, why can’t we hire somebody like her? Do you know her?’ And he was told she was excellent.”
Pressed to say why Cuomo thought she was “impressive,” Glavin said the governor “liked how she maintained eye contact,” and “liked how she was assertive with him in the conversation.”
Glavin could not say whether the trooper was still working on Cuomo’s detail as of Friday.
“I don’t know… since the report was released, but what I can tell you is up until a day before the report, the trooper was working, and I would also add that the governor has a view of this particular trooper that’s positive, in terms of her job, and day-to-day,” she said. “People are not going to be retaliated against by Governor Cuomo.”
On former aide Lindsey Boylan’s claims
In an essay published in February, former Cuomo aide Lindsey Boylan claimed the governor forcibly kissed her on the lips inside his Manhattan office, repeatedly sexually harassed her and suggested the two of them play strip poker as they flew back from an October 2017 event in Western New York, among other allegations.
Glavin on Friday doubled down on the Cuomo administration’s claim that Boylan’s allegations were politically motivated, as she was running to become Manhattan borough president at the time.
She also continued to maintain that Cuomo staffers Abbey Fashouer Collins, John Maggiore, Howard Zemsky and Dani Lever were on the plane when the alleged incident happened, and all four “stated that this conversation did not happen.”
Neither Glavin nor Fishman addressed the sexual harassment allegations lodged against Cuomo by his other accusers during the briefing, including former aide Charlotte Bennett.
On the investigation itself
Glavin on Friday claimed the attorney general’s investigators — led by former prosecutor Joon Kim and employment attorney Anne Clark — “acted as prosecutors, judge and jury.”
“I’m a former federal prosecutor, and I know the difference between putting together a case against a target, versus doing independent fact-finding with an open mind,” she said. “There has been no open-minded fact-finding here, in this investigation.”
“This investigation was conducted in a manner to support a predetermined narrative,” she added. “This was not an exercise in truth-finding.”
Both Glavin and Fishman also claimed the attorney general’s office did not provide them with any “underlying evidence” used to compile the report.
“We have not had a chance to examine the transcripts, or even memos, of interviews of the 179 people that the attorney general interviewed,” she added. “But what I do know, based on the limited information we’ve been given access to, there are contrary facts and omissions from that report, and you have to ask yourselves, why?”
Attorney General Letitia James' response
In a statement released hours after Cuomo’s lawyers held the briefing, the attorney general’s press secretary and senior advisor, Fabien Levy, slammed their rebuttal.
“After multiple women made accusations that Governor Cuomo sexually harassed them, the governor, himself, requested that Attorney General James oversee an independent investigation,” Levy said.
“The independent investigators selected are widely respected professionals, recognized for their legal and investigatory ability. To attack this investigation and attempt to undermine and politicize this process takes away from the bravery displayed by these women.”
“There will be a rolling production of interview transcripts made available to the state Assembly, which will be redacted as needed,” Levy added. “There are 11 women whose accounts have been corroborated by a mountain of evidence. Any suggestion that attempts to undermine the credibility of these women or this investigation is unfortunate."
The New York State Assembly’s Judiciary Committee, which is currently conducting an impeachment probe into the allegations Cuomo faces, said on Thursday that investigation was "nearing completion."
The committee also gave Cuomo's team until 5 p.m. on Aug. 13 to hand over pertinent evidence.
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