New York Governor Andrew Cuomo resigns over sexual harassment scandal

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday announced he would step down in two weeks due to a sexual harassment scandal that has crippled his administration.

Cuomo’s shocking announcement on a live broadcast from his Manhattan office came after his lawyer again flatly denied allegations that he sexually harassed someone during the Democrat’s three terms.

Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul will replace Cuomo, becoming the Empire State’s first female governor.

“Thank you for letting me serve you. It has been the honor of a lifetime,” Cuomo said. “God bless you.”

Cuomo’s resignation comes a week after a damning report released by the state attorney general’s office revealed that he sexually harassed at least 11 women, including current and former staff, as well as a state policeman.

Cuomo strongly denied the women’s allegations and said the investigation was marred by bias against him and by politics.

His resignation came five months after the harassment allegations against him exploded in public view.

His fall represents an astonishing reversal of his political fortunes in 2020, when his handling of the Covid pandemic was widely praised and he was awarded a lucrative book contract to write about his handling of it.

The governor has also been mentioned as a possible running mate for Biden or a potential attorney general in the new administration.

Cuomo resisted resignation calls for months, which began after several former aides – Lindsey Boylan, Charlotte Bennett and Karen Hinton – accused him of inappropriate behavior towards them.

Other women have described Cuomo’s similar behavior.

One of them, an aide, told her superiors that Cuomo aggressively groped her into the governor’s mansion last year after summoning her under the guise of fixing a cell phone problem.

The account of the unidentified woman was passed on to the Albany Police Department, who contacted their representative.

After James released his report, the Albany County District Attorney’s Office said it was conducting a criminal investigation into the conduct and would request investigative documents collected as part of the Attorney General’s investigation.

The governor, while claiming “I never touched anyone inappropriately” or intended to make women uncomfortable, admitted in March that he had “acted in a way that made women feel uncomfortable. uncomfortable people “.

On March 11, Democratic State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie authorized an impeachment inquiry into Cuomo’s conduct by the Judicial Commission.

Cuomo is a son of the late three-term Governor Mario Cuomo.

He was previously Attorney General of New York and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton administration.

Cuomo has three daughters with his ex-wife, Kerry Kennedy, whose own father, Robert Kennedy, served as United States Attorney General under his brother President John Kennedy and was assassinated while running for President in 1968.

Cuomo became a national star last year.

The governor had been praised for his factual press conferences detailing the grim toll of Covid-19, his frequent warnings to take precautions to avoid becoming infected and his empathetic response to the human toll of the pandemic.

Cuomo’s joke-filled Covid-filled interviews with his own brother, CNN host Chris Cuomo, won rave reviews, fodder for late-night comedians, and provided water for criticism from ethicists medias.

The governor’s press conferences have often been contrasted with those of then-President Donald Trump, who has been criticized for questioning the advice of his own medical advisers and repeatedly downplaying the danger of the virus. The governor of New York won an Emmy late last year for his television performances.

But Cuomo’s Covid management – and his aggressive style of government management overall – also carried the seeds of his political destruction.

Although he was easily re-elected twice, Cuomo has long alienated himself from many Democrats and progressives in the state.

Lawmakers in Democratic states have also resented Cuomo’s past unspoken alliance with a small clique of Democratic senators who, for years, effectively handed control of the state Senate to Republicans, even though Democrats held the majority of seats.

Throughout his political career, Cuomo has had a way of micromanaging and not going to jail for dealing with opponents and potential allies who are slow to bow to his will.

This style was fully observed in Cuomo’s dealings with Assembly member Ron Kim of Queens, a Democrat who said in April that the governor loudly lambasted him during a phone call to his home and threatened to kill him. “destroy” it following Kim’s criticism of the lack of disclosure of data on Covid-related deaths.

Kim and other lawmakers had been angry after hearing from senior governor official Melissa DeRosa that her administration withheld data on Covid deaths from nursing home residents. DeRosa claimed at the time that the data was being kept under wraps to prevent it from being “used against us” by federal prosecutors under the command of Trump’s attorney general, William Barr.

Although Cuomo categorically denied Kim’s account of this call, he accused Kim of “unethical” conduct by supporting nail salon owners as lawmakers discuss passing industry reforms. six years ago.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who himself has long been a whip to the governor, called the phone call “classic Andrew Cuomo.”

“A lot of people in New York State have received these phone calls,” de Blasio said in an interview on MSNBC.

“Bullying is nothing new. I believe Ron Kim and it is very, very sad, no public servant, no person who is telling the truth, should be treated this way. Threats, belittlement, l ‘requirement that someone change their statement correctly at the time … many, many times I have heard this and I know a lot of other people in this state have heard this. “

Controversy over the phone call erupted shortly before Cuomo Boylan’s former aide resurrected his previous claims he sexually harassed her.

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