A New York state Assembly committee investigating Gov. Andrew Cuomo for a possible impeachment over sexual misconduct allegations will begin issuing subpoenas, a member of the committee announced Wednesday.
The impeachment investigation, which commenced back in March, is examining multiple allegations of sexual misconduct against Cuomo by at least 10 women, including current and former staffers.
Assemblyman Charles Lavine, a Democrat who chairs the chamber’s Judiciary Committee, announced that subpoenas would soon be filed, saying the committee is seeking information through subpoenas to corroborate existing evidence.
“The purpose of this process is to both gather substantive evidence, as well as to assess the credibility and corroborate information learned during interviews,” he said.
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The subpoenas will likely be issued to “a whole wide range of categories of people,” Assemblyman Tom Abinanti said following the meeting on Wednesday.
Coupled with the planned subpoenas are collections of more than 100,000 pages of records, emails, transcripts, texts, letters, and other documents gathered by the firm Davis Polk, which was hired by Speaker Carl Heastie to lead the chamber’s investigation.
When asked whether the announcement of subpoenas on Wednesday signaled an end to the investigation, Abinanti said, “No, not yet.”
“Let’s face it: we’ve given [Davis Polk] a huge task,” he continued. “There’s a lot of issues for them to look at.”
In addition to the Assembly’s investigation, New York Attorney General Letitia James is conducting a separate investigation into the allegations, which Cuomo has said are false. She began issuing subpoenas months ago, and her office has reportedly interviewed senior Cuomo officials, signaling her investigation may be winding down.
Cuomo faces several other scandals threatening his governorship.
The governor has been accused of directing state health officials to give special COVID-19 testing access to members of his inner circle. Richard Azzopardi, a senior Cuomo adviser, denied those claims as “insincere efforts to rewrite the past” in an email to the Washington Examiner.
The alleged use of state resources in the promotion of Cuomo’s book, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from COVID-19 Pandemic, has also attracted scrutiny from elected officials. In April, James received a referral to conduct a criminal investigation into Cuomo’s use of state resources after a March 31 ethics complaint from a liberal watchdog group sought an inquiry into whether he violated a law prohibiting “the use of campaign funds for personal use.”
Cuomo insisted that members of his staff volunteered to help with the book, though his office acknowledged there might be some “incidental” use of state resources, according to the New York Times.
The Democratic governor is also under federal investigation for his handling of nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic after Melissa DeRosa, a top Cuomo aide, acknowledged that the governor’s office hid the state’s nursing home coronavirus death toll out of fear of political retribution from then-President Donald Trump. Cuomo’s legal defense in that case could cost New York taxpayers up to $2.5 million.
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Cuomo, who has denied all allegations of wrongdoing, has resisted calls for his resignation. He is eligible to seek a fourth term in 2022, and he has signaled an intent to run. A $10,000-per-person fundraiser held for Cuomo on Tuesday raked in more than $1 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Cuomo’s office for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
