The New York State Assembly on Monday released a report on former Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-Groper)’s sexual harassment and coverup of COVID-19 deaths, and it’s abundantly clear now why Cuomo opted to resign rather than face impeachment proceedings that would almost certainly have led to his being ignominiously removed from office and driven from public life. The report details how Cuomo sexually harassed twelve women, seven of whom were on his staff, and covered up the real number of people who died from COVID in the nursing homes into which he had forced them, and it’s even more damning, and revolting, than Cuomo’s harshest critics might have expected.
The report demonstrates that the report on COVID in the nursing homes that the Cuomo administration released last summer was “substantially revised by the Executive Chamber,” in order to make the governor’s actions appear to be much more innocuous than they really were. The fallen Leftist idol also downplayed and trivialized the sexual harassment allegations he faced; however, the scope of the scandal just keeps widening: the State Assembly’s report found another Cuomo accuser who was not included in New York State Attorney General Letitia James’ report last August. Cuomo, the State Assembly report says, “engaged in multiple instances of sexual harassment, including by creating a hostile work environment and engaging in sexual misconduct.”
Cuomo comes off as ham-handed, insensitive, nauseatingly creepy, and repulsively aggressive; by comparison, even Bill Clinton looks smooth. Sherry Vill, one of the women who has accused Cuomo of sexual harassment, says that Cuomo “manhandled” her, kissed her without her consent, and behaved in a “highly sexual manner” while visiting her home in Greece, New York, which had been damaged in a flood. “The whole thing was so strange and inappropriate,” she recounted in March, before Cuomo resigned, “and still makes me nervous and afraid because of his power and position. I am still afraid of him, but I am no longer willing to remain silent.”
Even worse, soon afterward Vill “received a voicemail from someone in the Executive Chamber inviting her to attend an event at which the then-Governor would be present.” According to the New York Post, Vill “told investigators that none of her family members, nor any neighbor who had met Cuomo during the same visit, received an invitation to the event.” Clearly, Randy Andy had more on his mind than creating goodwill among voters in Greece, New York: the report states that she “also later received signed photos from the then-Governor’s visit; neither her family members nor her neighbors received photographs either.”
Related: Andrew Cuomo’s Shameless Resignation
Cuomo and his aides, the report says, “were not fully transparent with the public regarding the number of COVID-19 deaths among nursing home residents.” That has been widely reported, but the State Assembly report also found that Cuomo covered up nursing home deaths in part because he had signed a lucrative book deal with Penguin Random House, and didn’t need any bad news coming out to lessen enthusiasm for the book. Former New York State Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens) declared: “It’s crystal clear now that Andrew Cuomo has had a financial motive to suppress nursing home death toll numbers. The report clarifies how the former governor abused his power to lie and cover-up life and death data to preserve his lucrative book deal. These are beyond impeachable offenses, and we must hold him accountable.”
To make matters even worse, the report states that Cuomo made state employees work on his book while they were at work and getting paid by the taxpayers, and then falsely claimed that they helped him with his book on their own time. “The former governor utilized state resources and property, including work by Executive Chamber staff, to write, publish and promote his book — a project for which he was guaranteed at least $5.2 million in personal profit.”
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) concluded: “This has been a profoundly sad chapter in New York’s history.” Yes, indeed it has, and it isn’t even over yet. Cuomo is gone, but the corrupt system that allowed him to remain governor for ten years even while behaving like a sex-obsessed teenager and that allowed him to evade responsibility for the nursing home deaths he caused and then lied about is still very much in place. The only thing that Americans can be grateful for is that this “profoundly sad chapter in New York’s history” didn’t become a “profoundly sad chapter in America’s history,” as Randy Andy’s presidential aspirations now appear to have been torpedoed for good. We dodged a bullet in that. Not that there aren’t others being fired.
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