We are nearing checkmate. It’s just a matter of how long it will take Cuomo to see it.
We are nearing checkmate. It’s just a matter of how long it will take Cuomo to see it.
E vents surrounding Governor Andrew Cuomo’s scandals are moving quickly, veering toward a rapid impeachment. I believe that could happen, although as I reiterated last week, New York impeachment standards are vague, and unlike the federal process, there is extensive judicial participation. That could bog things down . . . but — again, unlike federal impeachment — any bogging down would probably happen with Cuomo suspended from office.
The best outcome at this point would be for Andrew Cuomo to resign. He is not wired that way, and so far, his lawyers are aggressively contesting the allegations publicly. But I don’t see how he can survive with his own staffers, who want to have a future in Democratic politics, abandoning him, as top aide Melissa DeRosa — who has her own potential legal problems — did last night.
The big news over the weekend was that Brittany Commisso, the previously unidentified state executive-chamber staffer who alleges that Cuomo groped her breast, filed a formal complaint with the Albany County sheriff’s office and then went public. She had been referred to only as “Executive Assistant #1” in state attorney general Letitia James’s explosive sexual-harassment report last week. Ms. Commisso sat for a CBS News interview this morning.
On Saturday, Albany’s sheriff, Craig Apple, gave a press conference. This was impeachment politics masquerading as a law-enforcement exercise. There is no reason for a law-enforcement office to hold a press conference to announce that a complainant has filed an official report. That would be true even in the case of a serious felony; as Sheriff Apple conceded, the police are evaluating Commisso’s groping complaint as a misdemeanor under New York law.
More to the point, while it’s perfectly fine for analysts and the public at large to make the political and moral judgment that Cuomo is a scoundrel, he is presumed innocent in the justice system. State law-enforcement officers have an obligation not to undermine that presumption, which is why they customarily refrain from confirming even that a criminal investigation exists, unless and until charges are filed — and even then, they must confine their comments to what is written in the publicly filed pleadings.
In Albany, however, sheriff is an elected position, so the law-enforcement function is politicized. The press conference was a pretext for Apple to refer to the then-unidentified Commisso as a “victim” numerous times — and then, absurdly, to accuse a reporter who called him on it as being “presumptuous”; of course, it was Apple himself who was positing an improper presumption of Cuomo’s guilt. In fact, Apple noted in passing that his office had not even interviewed Commisso yet (they’d only met to take her complaint). The sheriff has done no real investigation and does not even have access to the relevant evidence summarized in the AG’s report — he is hoping to get that by the end of this week.
At this point then, Commisso has made an allegation and Cuomo has publicly denied it. As far as the criminal-justice system is concerned, that makes her a complainant, not a victim. The fact that we may believe her does not mean the case has been proved in court — there hasn’t even been a charge, much less a conviction.
While there was no valid law-enforcement purpose for Sheriff Apple’s gratuitous performance (which included the provocative observation that his deputies could potentially place Cuomo under arrest), the political purpose was blatant. Unlike the other allegations against the governor, Commisso’s accusation involves a clear, actionable crime. That has a catalyzing effect on the impeachment push.
Remember, Commisso’s claim (though not her identity) has been public for months. It was going nowhere legally because, up until now, she didn’t want to press charges. Initially, she did not even report the grope internally. She was prepared to remain mum, but became angry over one of Cuomo’s dunderheaded press conferences, in which he indignantly insisted he’d never sexually harassed anyone. In a fit of pique, Commisso confided her experience to a colleague, who was outraged and reported it third-hand to the executive chamber . . . which had no choice at that point but to report it to the state AG.
It was only after AG James’s 165-page report was issued that Commisso apparently decided to go public, after filing a formal complaint with the sheriff’s office. Apple suggested she did so because of the example of the “other brave victims” (i.e., the ten other women who allege that Cuomo harassed them in some manner).
This complaint, supplemented by Apple’s breathless press conference, enables those in the New York state assembly who are pushing for Cuomo’s impeachment to assert publicly that the matter has become grave: The governor is now the subject of a criminal investigation for a form of sexual assault, one that allegedly victimized a state government employee on state government property (the governor’s mansion), in an exploitation of Cuomo’s state government power.
Politically speaking, this is a disaster that more than makes up for Cuomo’s recent illusory victory — the Justice Department’s decision to drop the civil probe of his March 2020 order forcing nursing homes to take COVID-positive patients. This was “illusory,” as I’ve previously explained, because the end of DOJ’s civil inquiry into whether Cuomo violated the civil rights of institutional persons did not end the federal investigations; the governor and his top aides are still subjects of a criminal investigation by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn (the Eastern District of New York).
Speaking of Cuomo’s top aides, it cannot be a surprise that the pugnacious Melissa DeRosa — derided on the front cover of today’s New York Post as “Cuomo’s Dragon Lady” — has called it quits.
As Rich and I discussed on our TMR podcast Friday, one of the most serious (albeit least discussed) aspects of James’s report is the allegation, which seems well-corroborated, that Cuomo and his top staffers used the power of the governor’s office not merely to create a hostile work environment but to retaliate against whistleblowers (particularly Lindsey Boylan) and, in so doing, to intimidate other potential whistleblowers. The report describes DeRosa as a significant player in those efforts, which may well have violated state and federal civil-rights law.
So while Cuomo is in the fight of his political life, DeRosa has her own concerns at the moment. This is illustrative of why I believe the governor will have to resign, even though every ounce of his being will resist this conclusion.
Once President Biden turned on Cuomo last week, calling for him to resign hours after James issued her report, the partisan ground shifted. The Republicans are beside the point here. The woke-Left faction of the Democratic Party already wanted Cuomo out, and now the Democratic establishment has ostracized him. People on Cuomo’s staff, on whom he depends to govern, have begun scrambling for the exits. They have their own futures to think about, and there is no upside for them in fighting the party establishment.
After dawdling for months, the assembly suddenly directed him last week to have his lawyers pull together anything he wants to argue in his defense and submit it by this Friday. Members of the assembly’s judiciary committee say they are now prepared to move quickly on impeachment articles. If the committee does so, and the full assembly votes to impeach — and they clearly have the votes — then Cuomo would be suspended from office. Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul would be installed as acting governor, and Cuomo would be nearly impotent to leverage the powers of his office to stave off removal. All that would be left to him is to drag impeachment out in the courts, from the sidelines, while the party treats him as a pariah.
We are nearing checkmate. It’s just a matter of how long it will take Cuomo to see it.