Governor Andrew Cuomo Resigns Over Damning Sexual Assault Report While Still Denying Any Wrongdoing
Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York announced his resignation on Tuesday, after a damning report from the state’s attorney general alleging he sexually assaulted several women, prompting demands from leading Democrats, including Vice President Joe Biden, for him to stand down.
He announced his resignation while arguing that he done nothing wrong.
Cuomo attempted to stay in office for days after the report was released, claiming that he had done nothing illegal, but ultimately gave in to the pressure.
Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, will complete his term and become the state’s first woman governor.
Cuomo defied bipartisan calls to resign after being accused of sexual harassment earlier this year, predicting that the investigation he commissioned from state Attorney General Letitia James would exonerate him. Instead, he was accused of harassing 11 women, nine of whom were state workers, and subjecting some of them to unwanted touching and groping, according to the report. According to the article, his office retaliated against one of the ladies when she spoke out about how she was handled.
The state Assembly has started impeachment procedures in the aftermath of the report. Local law enforcement authorities also said that they were looking into whether or not criminal charges were warranted.
Cuomo was asked whether she thought she should resign after the report was published last week. “It is up to the governor to make that choice. The report is self-evident “She gave an answer.
When questioned about the story, Biden, a longstanding Cuomo supporter, was more direct. Biden said, “I believe he should resign.”
Last year, the third-term governor was riding high in public opinion surveys after his public briefings on the coronavirus epidemic in his hard-hit state were praised, and now he has resigned.
This reputation was shattered in January, when James’ office released a study alleging that the state Health Department had underreported the Covid-19 mortality toll in nursing homes by up to 50%. After that, a senior Cuomo staffer was caught on tape telling Democratic lawmakers that the government delayed months to disclose the complete data on nursing home patients, partly due to concerns that the data would be “used against us” by the Trump administration.
Earlier this year, the US attorney’s office in Brooklyn and the FBI launched a preliminary inquiry into how the Cuomo administration handled the data.
Cuomo was subsequently accused of threatening to “destroy” a Democratic member who said the administration “covered up” the nursing facility statistics in mid-February. Cuomo vehemently denied any cover-up.
Following that, a slew of sexual harassment accusations surfaced, notably from former aides. Lindsey Boylan was the first to come out, writing an article for the website Medium in which she recounted being exposed to “pervasive harassment” throughout her time working for the governor.
Cuomo allegedly made several improper remarks to Boylan in front of other individuals, including inviting her to play “strip poker” and kissing her on the lips while they were alone, according to Boylan.
Boylan’s allegations were labeled “quite simply untrue” by Cuomo’s office, but they prompted many more women to come forward to allege they had been abused, as well as a flood of Democratic legislators, including the overwhelming majority of New York’s congressional delegation, to demand for his resignation.
Cuomo ordered James to investigate the harassment accusations in the hopes of exonerating himself, but the investigation ended up substantiating all of the allegations against him in a scathing 165-page report.
According to the investigation, he grabbed an executive assistant beneath her blouse in one instance and fondled a state policeman in another. According to the report, the governor “sexually harassed a number of current and former New York State employees by, among other things, engaging in unwelcome and nonconsensual touching, as well as making numerous offensive suggestive and sexual comments that created a hostile work environment for women.”
Cuomo said shortly after the report’s publication, “I never touched anybody improperly or made unwanted sexual approaches,” and promised to concentrate on his work.
Cuomo planned to seek for a fourth term, something his three-term governor father, Mario Cuomo, failed to do.
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