Why Did Some Stand by Andrew Cuomo?

I n a column at Salon, Amanda Marcotte considers the case of New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who announced his resignation today amid sexual-misconduct allegations, and the question of “why women play along with sexist men.”

There are many possible answers to that question — access to power is Marcotte’s verdict, but there’s also ideology, social ties and competition for social status, and, never to be ignored, the root of all evil: the love of money.

Sometimes, a whole lot of money.

Consider the case of Karen Hinton, a former Cuomo aide and flack for New York City mayor Bill de Blasio. According to Hinton’s own account, as reported by the New York Post, she was herself subjected to some fairly awful behavior by Cuomo, and, while she was in his employ, was a party to his passing over a potential hire because, she recalls him saying, “She’s not pretty enough. I don’t like the way she looks.”

Hinton’s name comes up in the case against Cuomo, but not as a complainant — she stood by her man right up until the point when it was no longer in her interest to do so.

Cuomo was a valuable connection, obviously. But you may not know how valuable.

As I reported in 2018, Karen Hinton held a percentage interest in a $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron — a mammoth financial award obtained through fraud, falsification of evidence, and witness-tampering carried out under the guidance of Hinton’s client at the time, lawyer and Barack Obama basketball buddy Steve Donziger. That judgment has since been thrown out by a federal judge who characterized the lawsuit as a criminal racketeering conspiracy, while Donziger was disbarred and incarcerated (under house arrest) for nearly two years while awaiting trial on six counts of criminal contempt of court, charges on which he has now been convicted.

Hinton’s end of that judgment, had it not been thrown out, would have been worth almost $12 million — not a bad payday for a public-relations agent, especially when added to the $10,000-a-month retainer the Donziger enterprise paid her for her services.

What exactly were those services? The New York Times makes it clear that she wasn’t being paid all that money just to write press releases:

Two years ago, Andrew M. Cuomo, then New York’s attorney general, unexpectedly jumped into a legal fight over an issue that had little to do with the state: damage to the Amazon rain forest from oil drilling.

Mr. Cuomo, now the governor of New York, subtly threatened to investigate Chevron, which is the defendant in a multibillion-dollar lawsuit over the Amazon damage that has stretched out for nearly 18 years. Mr. Cuomo indicated that he decided to get involved because Chevron might have violated state law in its handling of the litigation.

But now, newly disclosed documents point to another factor.

“Andrew has no interest in doing this,” a lobbyist for the plaintiffs, Ecuadorean villagers who live in the polluted area, wrote in an e-mail in 2009. “He is doing this for me. Because I asked.”

The lobbyist, Karen Hinton, a former Cuomo aide, was paid $10,000 a month by those representing the Ecuadoreans, in part to obtain Mr. Cuomo’s vocal support, according to the records and interviews.

How do you go about getting yourself a percentage of a multi-billion-dollar judgment? There are only a few ways.

One is champerty, the practice of investing in a lawsuit in which you have no prior interest as a form of speculation. Because champerty used to be a crime in many places, it is known in modern legal circles by the anodyne name “litigation financing.” But you have to have a lot of free money to do that; it’s a rich-get-richer proposition.

If you don’t have that kind of ready money, you can still get yourself a piece of a big lawsuit: You just have to bring a different kind of capital to the table. One very valuable form of capital is celebrity — that’s how Roger Waters, the activist and Pink Floyd guitarist, secured for himself a percentage interest in the same lawsuit.

Another is the kind of capital that Karen Hinton offered: access to political power.

Lawsuits aren’t fought only in the courtroom, and when someone like Hinton can boast of having the influence to bring the attorney general — and future governor — of New York into the service of your lawsuit/criminal conspiracy, that’s worth a couple of points on the payday.

Cuomo may be a creep, but why tank the creep when he’s your ticket to a potential eight-figure check?

From Hunter Biden’s sham career as a businessman to his new sham career as an artist, from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s cattle futures to the billions “Blood and Gore” made from green activism, there is a great deal of profit to be had from standing close to powerful men and holding your nose.

Amanda Marcotte, who once was an employee of John Edwards, is in an excellent position to appreciate that.