New York AG’s Report on Cuomo’s ‘Pattern’ of Sexual Harassment Is Devastating

I t is difficult to imagine that Governor Andrew Cuomo can survive the devastating report, finding him to be a serial violator of sexual-harassment law, issued today by New York state attorney general Letitia James and her outside investigators.

The report concludes that the governor violated federal and state laws, as well as executive-chamber rules. It was synopsized at a press conference this morning by AG James and the two investigators, Joon Kim, a former top federal prosecutor, and Anne Clark, a highly experienced employment and gender-discrimination litigator.

In lurid detail, James and the investigators laid out allegations by eleven different women, all of whom were found to be credible and their stories found to be corroborated, to a greater or lesser extent. The victims included current and former state employees, as well as executive-chamber staffers, and even a state trooper on the governor’s security detail.

Cuomo was found to have engaged in nonconsensual touching, including groping of some of the women’s intimate areas. He was found to have groped one unidentified staffer’s breast under her blouse. She reported having been hugged a number of times, and, Clark asserted, Cuomo “grabbed her butt” — a phrase the investigator used more than once in connection with the governor’s misconduct.

Cuomo was also found to have engaged in seemingly ceaseless banter and overtures of a sexual nature. This made for what Kim described as a “toxic” work environment — invoking a word he said had been used by several witnesses and victims. Cuomo, for example, is said to have told the state trooper that he was looking for a woman “who could handle pain.” He asked a staffer whether she’d cheat on her husband, adding “what I’d do to you” if she were single.

The governor’s behavior, the investigators concluded, constituted a pattern of disturbing and humiliating misconduct, creating a hostile work environment for women, in violation of state sexual-harassment law.

The breast-groping allegation, moreover, had already been referred by the executive chamber to the Albany Police Department, as required by chamber rules. Nevertheless, the investigators found that Cuomo’s closest staffers repeatedly ignored reporting rules in order to protect the governor; Melissa DeRosa, Cuomo’s top aide, was specifically named at the press conference in this connection.

Significantly, Cuomo and his aides were also cited for retaliating against people who came forward, including at least one victim, Lindsey Boylan.

The investigators found that after she went public with her harassment allegations, an internal state document alleging uncorroborated misconduct against Boylan was circulated internally to arm Cuomo sympathizers to speak in his defense. Furthermore, a letter attacking Boylan was circulated, and state employees were encouraged to sign it.

Though the letter was never formally published, it was shared with at least one member of the media. Cuomo originally argued to advisers that the letter should be released. He was talked out of it, however, upon being convinced, the investigators said, that “victim-shaming would be a bad strategy.”

The AG’s report is a thoroughgoing disaster for Cuomo, who currently plans to seek a fourth term as governor next year. While there were many victims, and investigators found significant corroboration for their accusations, it is important to grasp why the report is so damning.

AG James’s investigators did not see their mission as doing anything but conducting an investigation and publishing findings. James repeatedly said her office’s work is concluded — there will be no civil suits or criminal prosecutions by her office. She explained that the report is being published, so it will be there for the consideration of further legal and political action by others — including police, prosecutors, potential civil claimants, and the state assembly, which is conducting a plodding impeachment probe of Cuomo.

Nevertheless, the attorney general will take no action based on the report. (She did acknowledge that she is continuing to investigate the self-laudatory book Governor Cuomo published a few months back, regarding his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.)

When prosecutors investigate a case with an eye toward bringing charges, they only formally allege and publicly announce criminal misconduct that they believe they can prove in court beyond a reasonable doubt. Similarly, civil litigants are limited to pleading what they have reason to believe they can establish in court. For these reasons, public charging instruments and pleadings tend to include only part of the misconduct that an investigation has turned up. Frequently, some disturbing incidents that have been uncovered are nevertheless excluded because evidence of them fails to satisfy the criminal or civil standards of proof.

James and her investigators operated under no such limitations. Since they are not trying to prove a case, they chose not to limit themselves in what they could say publicly. Consequently, if they found misconduct within the four corners of their mandate to examine sexual harassment, they published it.

This is catastrophic for the governor because most people will accept the findings of an official investigation by a state attorney general, conducted pursuant to state-law authority by well-regarded lawyers, as if these findings had been proven in court. But of course, they haven’t been. There has been no presentation by the defense, no opportunity to cross-examine witnesses, and no other side of the story.

It was ironic, then, for James to criticize Cuomo and his sympathizers who, she observed, had tried to “politicize” her investigation. This exercise is nothing if not political. Cuomo is a political casualty — he has not even been indicted or sued, much less convicted of a crime or held civilly liable.

Did I mention that Letitia James is rumored to have gubernatorial aspirations?