ALBANY, N.Y. — Gov. Andrew Cuomo allegedly “aggressively” groped a female aide, reaching under her blouse, after she was summoned to the governor’s private chamber at the Executive Mansion last year, according to a new report Wednesday.
The staffer, the latest in a growing number of women who have reported sexual harassment allegations against the embattled governor, had been asked to assist Cuomo with an issue involving his cell phone when the incident occurred, the Albany Times Union reported.
The pair were alone in the governor’s residence in the Albany mansion when he “closed the door and allegedly reached under her blouse and began to fondle her,” a source with knowledge of the incident told the newspaper. The much-younger staffer told Cuomo to stop.
Last week, as the governor held a televised press conference during which he claimed he has never touched anyone “inappropriately,” the woman became upset and told a female supervisor about the incident.
At the time of the March 3 briefing, only three accusers had come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct and other claims against the 63-year-old Democrat.
As that number doubled over the past week, calls for the governor’s resignation have swelled.
Cuomo has said he has no intention of stepping down while Attorney General Letitia James oversees a probe into the allegations against him.
On Wednesday, the governor denied the latest allegation, which could be pursued legally as misdemeanor sexual assault, in a statement to the Times Union.
“As I said yesterday, I have never done anything like this,” he said. “The details of this report are gut-wrenching. 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 scandal has engulfed the governor, already under fire and facing a federal probe over his administration’s handling of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes.
Cuomo has remained defiant, suggesting it would be “anti-democratic” for him to step down.
“There is no way I resign,” he said Sunday.
Over the weekend, Ana Liss, a former policy and operations aide to the governor, told the Wall Street Journal that Cuomo repeatedly inquired about her personal life, touched her, and on one occasion kissed her hand as she rose from her desk.
Karen Hinton, who worked with the governor when he led the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, said Cuomo once invited her to his hotel room during a work trip to California and hugged her repeatedly in a manner that was “too long, too tight, too intimate” when she tried to leave.
Former aide Charlotte Bennett, 25, said that Cuomo asked her probing personal questions including if she was interested in older men and indicated he was comfortable with “anyone above the age of 22” during private meetings last spring, at the height of the COVID-19 crisis.
Bennett called Cuomo a “textbook abuser” and detailed how she believes the governor was “grooming” her for a sexual relationship.
“Without explicitly saying it, he implied to me that I was old enough for him and he was lonely,” she told CBS News last week.
Bennett’s lawyer, Debra Katz, said on Wednesday that the latest claims are “eerily similar” to what her client alleges the governor did to her.
“Had the Governor’s staff taken Charlotte Bennett’s allegations and their legal obligations seriously, perhaps this woman would have been spared of this sexual assault,” Katz said in a statement. “That the governor does not deny touching people, but insists he never did it inappropriately, shows he is committed to gaslighting victims and perpetuating these lies. This is exactly how abusers operate.”
Bennett, Liss and Hinton all came forward after former Cuomo adviser Lindsey Boylan published an essay last month accusing the 63-year-old of kissing her on the mouth without her consent during a meeting at his Manhattan office.
Another woman, Anna Ruch, 33, alleges the governor made unwanted advances toward her and planted an unsolicited kiss on her cheek at a 2019 wedding.
As a growing number of Cuomo’s fellow Demsocrats, including Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers, have called on him to step down, Republicans are mounting a long-shot bid to impeach the governor.
“The Governor is no longer capable of leading New York at a time when we need leadership,” Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt, R-Erie County, said as he backed the push for impeachment earlier Wednesday. “New York State is still fighting this deadly pandemic and we are days away from beginning state budget negotiations. With so much at stake, he and his closest aides continue to plunge Albany into a morass of scandal, the scale and scope of which are truly unprecedented.”
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