Democrats who control the New York state Assembly should waste no time voting to impeach Gov. Andrew Cuomo for sexually harassing women who worked for him (and some who didn’t), for creating a hostile work environment for women in the Executive Chamber, and for retaliating against an accuser by leaking confidential internal documents to the press.
The governor, sworn to uphold the law, broke federal and state laws prohibiting workplace sexual harassment. He has lost the confidence of the Legislature and even some members of his own administration.
Independent investigators appointed by Attorney General Letitia James, in a report released Tuesday, exhaustively documented the governor’s creepy, sexist, demeaning and inappropriate behavior toward 11 women. In addition to the women who came forward earlier this year, there are new accusations from a state Trooper assigned to Cuomo’s security detail and a Syracuse utility executive. The Albany County district attorney is investigating an executive assistant’s accusation that Cuomo touched her breast.
The AG’s report says plainly that Cuomo broke federal and state law by “engaging in unwelcome and nonconsensual touching, as well as making numerous offensive comments of a suggestive and sexual nature that created a hostile work environment for women.”
Cuomo continues to deny he touched anyone inappropriately. He attacks his accusers as liars and the AG’s investigators as politically motivated. In his defense, Cuomo paints himself as the victim of a grand misunderstanding. I’m a nice guy, he wants us to believe. But the governor’s denials fall flat in the face of the devastating evidence in the AG’s report. In his rebuttal, the governor produces photos of other politicians hugging, kissing and touching people — as if hugging your mom is comparable to kissing a subordinate employee on the lips.
The AG’s report does not cover the governor’s staff in glory, either. They are shown enabling and excusing their boss’s lecherous behavior, arranging for new jobs to move women away from his gaze, and doing damage control with the press.
Despite calls to resign from President Joe Biden, his fellow Northeast governors, New York’s two U.S. senators, many members of Congress and a significant number of state legislators, Cuomo remains defiant — and increasingly alone. Even his lieutenant governor, Kathy Hochul, called the governor’s behavior “repulsive & unlawful,” adding, “I believe these brave women.”
James documented the governor’s abuses but declined to use the powers of her office to bring charges, leaving that to local prosecutors and to plaintiffs bringing civil lawsuits. That leaves the Assembly to hold Cuomo accountable through its power of impeachment.
In March, we called for Cuomo’s impeachment over his administration’s cover-up of Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes, plus an assortment of other scandals. The Assembly’s impeachment probe has limped along since then. After the attorney general’s report came out Tuesday, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said the impeachment will be put on the fast track. “It is abundantly clear to me that the Governor has lost the confidence of the Assembly Democratic majority and that he can no longer remain in office,” Heastie said.
Also in March, when Cuomo was still acting contrite about his behavior, he urged New Yorkers to wait for James’s independent investigation before passing judgment.
Now that the report is in, the judgment is clear: Cuomo must go.
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