On Tuesday, a sixth woman came forward with sexual harassment allegations against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. At the time, the report from the Times Union of Albany said that Cuomo touched the woman inappropriately last year inside the governor’s mansion after she’d been summoned there on official business. But on Wednesday, new details were released, and they are shocking indeed.
According to a person familiar with the anonymous woman’s claims, the female aide alleges that Cuomo aggressively groped her in a sexually charged manner. According to the report, the woman “had been called to the mansion under the apparent pretext of having her assist the governor with a minor technical issue involving his mobile phone. They were alone in Cuomo’s private residence on the second floor when he closed the door and allegedly reached under her blouse and began to fondle her.”
These new details elevate the allegations from sexual harassment to potential misdemeanor sexual assault.
Cuomo denies these allegations. “As I said yesterday, I have never done anything like this,” he said in a statement to NBC News. “The details of this report are gut-wrenching,” he added. “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.”
New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio is taking advantage of Cuomo’s political troubles and is calling on the governor to resign. “He can no longer serve as governor,” de Blasio said at his daily briefing Thursday morning. “The latest report…that the governor called an employee in of his, someone who he had power over, called them to a private place and then sexually assaulted her, is absolutely unacceptable. It is disgusting to me.”
De Blasio is reportedly interested in running for governor.
Cuomo has now twice refused to resign, scoffing at calls from within his own party to step down, and even said he’d have to be impeached in order to leave office. On Monday, New York Republicans filed an impeachment resolution against Cuomo, and this latest allegation will certainly increase pressure on lawmakers on both sides to remove Cuomo from office.
A recent poll shows that between the nursing home scandal and the multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, Cuomo’s approval ratings have tanked. After reaching a high of 71 percent last April, his approval rating now stands at 38 percent.
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Matt Margolis is the author of Airborne: How The Liberal Media Weaponized The Coronavirus Against Donald Trump, and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter, Gab, Facebook, MeWe, Heroes, Rumble, and CloutHub.
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