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A former senior aide to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo accused her of intimidation and sexual harassment, expanding on allegations she first made in December. In an essay posted to Medium on Wednesday, the former staff member accused the governor of “doing everything possible” to touch her “lower back, arms and legs” and kissing her during a meeting face to face.
Lindsey Boylan, former chief of staff at the New York State Economic Agency, said the governor had “uncomfortably” interested in her after she was appointed to the post in 2015. “My boss Quickly informed me that the governor had a crush on her. “on me,” she wrote, saying that the director of the governor’s offices told her that Cuomo suggested she “look for pictures of Lisa Shields – his rumored former girlfriend – because “we could be sisters” and I was “the most beautiful sister.”
“The governor started calling me ‘Lisa’ in front of colleagues,” she wrote. “It was degrading.”
Boylan, who is now running for the Manhattan Borough, wrote in a series of December tweets that Cuomo “sexually harassed me for years.”
“I could never predict what to expect: would I be burned out on my job (which was great) or harassed because of my appearance. Or would it be both in the same conversation? It was like that for years, ”she wrote.
The governor denied the charges at the time. “This is not true,” he said during a press conference. “I have fought for and believe that a woman has the right to come forward and voice her opinion and voice the issues and concerns that she has. But that is just not true.”
His office again denied the charges on Wednesday. “As we have said before, the allegations of inappropriate behavior by Ms. Boylan are simply false,” press secretary Caitlin Girouard said in a statement. Girouard said Boylan’s memory of a 2017 flight aboard the governor’s jet – on which she alleged he suggested playing strip poker – cannot be true because the flight logs don’t match not to his account of who was on board.
“He was sitting across from me, so close our knees almost touched. His press assistant was to my right and a state soldier behind us,” Boylan said of the experience. Girouard said “there was no flight where Lindsey was alone with the governor, a single press secretary and an NYS Trooper.”
Cuomo’s press secretary shared what she said was the governor’s October 2017 program, which lists all passengers on his flights, as well as a statement from other aides on travel. “We were on each of those October flights and that conversation did not take place,” said Senior Advisor to Governor John Maggiore, Empire State Development President and CEO Howard Zemsky, former director of communications for Cuomo Dani Lever and former press secretary Abbey Fashouer Collins in a report.
Boylan said she had long “tried to excuse” the governor’s behavior, but could no longer do so after he gave her an unsolicited kiss at a private meeting in her New York office. . According to Boylan, the governor “stood in front of” her as she left her office and kissed her on the lips. “I was in shock, but I kept walking,” she writes.
Boylan said she walked past Cuomo’s executive secretary’s office on her way out of her office, and said she “was afraid she saw the kiss.”
“The idea that someone might think I held my high-ranking position because of the governor’s ‘crush’ on me was more humiliating than the kiss itself,” she added.
Boylan claimed that the governor’s “widespread harassment” was not limited to her. According to Boylan, the governor also “made unflattering comments about the weight of female colleagues … ridiculed them about their romantic relationships and loved ones” and “said the reasons men get women were” l ‘money and power “”.
“Governor Andrew Cuomo has created a culture within his administration where sexual harassment and bullying is so prevalent that it is not only tolerated but expected,” Boylan wrote. “His inappropriate behavior towards women was a claim that he loved you, that you have to do something right. He used intimidation to silence his critics. And if you dared to speak up, you would suffer the consequences.
Boylan wrote in her Medium essay that she was motivated to go public after learning that Cuomo was being considered for the post of United States Attorney General. “Seeing her name float as a potential candidate for the United States’ attorney general – the nation’s top law enforcement official – got me out of the question,” she said.
“In a few tweets, I told the world what a few close friends, family, and my therapist had known for years: Andrew Cuomo abused his power as governor to sexually harass me, as he had done with so many other women, ”she wrote.
“I know some will call my experience trivial. We’re used to powerful men behaving badly when no one is looking. But what does it say about us when everyone is watching and no one is saying anything? ? “
In response to Boylan’s essay, Republican New York MP Elise Stefanik called on Cuomo to step down. “Sexual harassment and sexual abuse in the workplace is not a political issue, it is good and bad. Governor Cuomo must resign immediately,” Stefanik wrote in a statement on Twitter. “… Any elected official who does not immediately call for his resignation is an accomplice.”
Stefanik isn’t the first New York lawmaker to call for Cuomo’s term to end. Congressman Ron Kim is arguing for impeachment, saying the governor threatened him after Kim insisted on his office getting “hidden” data on nursing home deaths during the pandemic.
“This is not about a feud between two people, it is about his continued efforts to implicate other lawmakers with lies and cover up his murderous one-sided policies during this pandemic,” Kim wrote in the New York Daily News. “The governor’s attempt to force me to lie about his administration should be the last straw.”
Brooklyn FBI and Federal Prosecutors have opened an investigation on how Cuomo’s administration treated nursing home residents who contracted COVID-19 in the early months of the pandemic.
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