NEW YORK (AP) — Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned over a barrage of sexual harassment allegations Tuesday in a fall from grace a year after he was widely hailed nationally for his detailed daily briefings and leadership during the darkest days of COVID-19.
The three-term governor’s decision, which will take effect in two weeks, was announced as momentum built in the Legislature to remove him by impeachment. It came after New York’s attorney general released the results of an investigation that found Cuomo sexually harassed at least 11 women.
Investigators said he subjected women to unwanted kisses; groped their breasts or buttocks or otherwise touched them inappropriately; made insinuating remarks about their looks and their sex lives; and created a work environment “rife with fear and intimidation.”
Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a 62-year-old Democrat and former member of Congress from the Buffalo area, will become the state’s 57th governor and the first woman to hold the post.
The #MeToo-era scandal cut short not just a career but a dynasty: Cuomo’s father, Mario Cuomo, was governor in the 1980s and ’90s, and the younger Cuomo was often mentioned as a potential candidate for president, an office his father famously contemplated seeking. Even as the scandal mushroomed, Cuomo was planning to run for reelection in 2022.
Cuomo still faces the possibility of criminal charges, with a number of prosecutors around the state moving to investigate him.
The string of accusations that spelled the governor’s downfall began to unfold in news reports last December and went on for months.
Cuomo called some of the allegations fabricated, forcefully denying he touched anyone inappropriately. But he acknowledged making some aides uncomfortable with comments he said he intended as playful, and he apologized for some of his behavior.
He portrayed some of the encounters as misunderstandings attributable to “generational or cultural” differences, a reference in part to his upbringing in an affectionate Italian American family.
As a defiant Cuomo clung to office, state lawmakers launched an impeachment investigation, and nearly the entire Democratic establishment in New York deserted him — not only over the accusations, but also because of the discovery that his administration had concealed thousands of COVID-19 deaths among nursing home patients.
The harassment investigation ordered up by the attorney general and conducted by two outside lawyers corroborated the women’s accounts and added lurid new ones. The release of the report left the governor more isolated than ever, with some of his most loyal supporters abandoning him and President Joe Biden joining those calling on him to resign.
His accusers included an aide who said Cuomo groped her breast at the governor’s mansion. Investigators also the governor’s staff retaliated against one of his accusers by leaking confidential personnel files about her.
As governor, Cuomo touted himself as an example of a “progressive Democrat” who gets things done: Since taking office in 2011, he helped push through legislation that legalized gay marriage, began lifting the minimum wage to $15 and expanded paid family leave benefits. He also backed big infrastructure projects, including airport overhauls and construction of a new bridge over the Hudson River that he named after his father.
At the same time the behavior that got him into trouble was going on, he was publicly championing the #MeToo movement and surrounding himself with women’s rights activists, signing into law sweeping new protections against sexual harassment and lengthening the statute of limitations in rape cases.
His national popularity soared during the harrowing spring of 2020, when New York became the epicenter of the nation’s coronavirus outbreak.
His tough-minded but empathetic response made for riveting television well beyond New York, and his stern warnings to people to stay home and wear masks stood in sharp contrast to President Donald Trump’s brush-off of the virus. His briefings won an international Emmy Award, and he went on to write a book on leadership in a crisis.
But even those accomplishments were soon tainted when it was learned that the state’s official count of nursing home deaths had excluded many patients who had been transferred to hospitals before they succumbed. A Cuomo aide acknowledged the administration feared the true numbers would be “used against us” by the Trump White House.
Also, Cuomo’s administration was fiercely criticized for forcing nursing homes to accept patients recovering from the virus.
The U.S. Justice Department is investigating the state’s handling of data on nursing home deaths. In addition, the state attorney general is looking into whether Cuomo broke the law in using members of his staff to help write and promote his book, from which he stood to make more than $5 million.
The governor had also increasingly come under fire over his rough and sometimes vindictive treatment of fellow politicians and his own staff, with former aides telling stories of a brutal work environment.
Cuomo has been divorced since 2005 from the author and activist Kerry Kennedy, a member of the Kennedy family, and was romantically involved up until 2019 with TV lifestyle personality Sandra Lee. He has three adult daughters.
He gained political experience early on as his father’s hard-nosed and often ruthless campaign manager, and went on to become New York attorney general and U.S. housing secretary under President Bill Clinton before getting elected governor in 2010.
New York has seen a string of high-level political figures brought down in disgrace in recent years.
Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in 2008 in a call-girl scandal. Rep. Anthony Weiner went to prison for sexting with a 15-year-old girl. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman stepped down in 2018 after four women accused him of abuse. And the top two leaders in the Legislature were convicted of corruption.
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I wonder if we can get puppet president Biden to resign for subjected women to unwanted kisses; groped their breasts or buttocks or otherwise touched them inappropriately; made insinuating remarks about their looks and their sex lives; and created a work environment “rife with fear and intimidation.” And unwanted smelling hair.
I highly doubt that will ever happen…
heck –he has already admitted he likes little kids sitting on his lap and touching him-
IF BEING A PEDO IS NOT ENOUGH TO GET YOU IMPEACHED THERE IS NO HOPE FOR THIS COUNTRY
I’m still waiting for the Feminazis to march on Albany. Though I’m sure I’ll be waiting a long time.
If he was a Republican, they’d already be there. Probably would’ve been there months ago.
They’d have started protesting for his ARREST and impeachment, after the FIRST CLAIM Of harassment came out…
Take his speech and substitute the word “perverse” for “diverse”,,,,perversity for diversity,,, and you get an idea of what really happened. I guarantee you most male Democrats so eager to promote unqualified women under them just to get elected with female votes, only to have them turn upon the politicians themselves when double crossed or abused, will soon try getting their women elected the old fashion way on talent instead of later getting waylaid and cut down the new “MEE TOO” way. Hell Hath no fury like a Kamala outed and scorned. Given the opportunity, she will turn on Joe like a 3% Primary candidate trying to take on 10% candidate in a Democrat Primary. The lessor the talent, the greater the accusations and willingness to attack and accuse. He who lives by the sword dies by the sword, he who lives by women’s votes often dies by them as well for nothing is sharper than a woman’s tongue or as tasteless and a CUomo’s.
I really couldn’t care less about this. First, he was run out of office because of accusations of “Me Too” violations instead of gross negligence in sending scores of seniors to their deaths in nursing homes. If “Me Too” allegations were the benchmark for running politicians out of office there probably wouldn’t be enough in congress to make a quorum…………….Hmmmmmmm…….Now that I think about it that would be a good thing.
Secondly, I’m pretty sure that anyone New Yorkers decide to replace Cuomo with will be at least as bad as he has been – probably much worse. So in terms of the impact on the rest of us in flyover country, who cares?
That is why i say he should STILL BE CRIMINALLY CHARGED.. So he doesn’t get to keep his cushy pension.
He already cut a deal, “I’ll resign if you Democrat prosecutors promise to leave me alone for all the elderly people I killed, and let me off with just a spanking for all the women I groped., and I will promise not to take down all my fellow Democrat criminal politicians still in office and industrialists who like me got rich off campaign contribution payoffs, built-in cost over run kickbacks just like the ones Pelosi and Schuner have built into the just approved Infrastructure bill and soon to make many more rich when the 3.5 trillion gets apporved.” His “Get out of Jail Free Card” has already been printed and received. Too many derelict Democrat criminal others will fall if the truth gets out.
his resignation speech was just a warm up for when he runs for congress or senate-
never heard so much I did this or I did that -self praise -since any speech obama ever made-
Inlumin.. I certainly wouldn’t be shocked, to find out he’s already GOT A “Get out of jail card free” from this…
Lady justice, USED to just be blind. NOW SHE IS NOT just blind, but BRAINLESS!
Biden is a fine one to criticize Cuomo. He’s cut out of the same cloth and guilty as Hell.
Yep curious1 and there is video of him pinching an 8 year girl’s chest in front of her Senator uncle who just got sworn in.
WT F Mate?
Andrew the Second Shameless One Cuomo litters his denials with “inappropriate” and “unintentionally.” Such words augment non-denial denials. It is too bad that the medical ship President Trump sent to New York to provide space for COVID victims, which went unused, did not remove Cuomo before he facilitated the deaths of 15,000 extra patients. His exit now gets a YOO-HAH-HAH!!
PITY IT wasn’t a JAIL BARGE that came…
Maybe this will end the hereditary fiefdom of New York.
Hopefully, the recall of Gavin Newsom will end the Brown/Getty/Pelosi/Newsom cabal that has run California with only brief interludes since 1959.
When Edmund G. “Pat” Brown’s 1958 campaign faltered, who stepped in for the financial rescue?
J. Paul Getty, the Getty Oil Corporation, Paul Pelosi (Nancy’s father-in-law), and the Getty Oil Chief Financial Officer, Bill Newsom (Gavin’s dad).
It’s time to end the California hereditary fiefdom too.
In a sense it really doesn’t matter. So they get rid of one Communist and and replace him with another one. They probably already have Bill DeBlowhard lined up and ready to go.
Cuomo is stepping aside. Sidestepping is one of his forte’s, like sidestepping the facts.
He is gone in a suitably humiliating manner.
Hopefully forever out of our misery as a POS.
The sheer number ow women puts the shame on him.
This is NOT a single occurrence but an ongoing thing.
What a sick POS.
PITY it cant happen to BIDEN AND all the other perverts in the DNC!