Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo will be asked to appear virtually before a judge Friday despite the Albany County district attorney’s decision not to pursue criminal charges against him.
Judge Holly Trexler of the Albany City Court in the 3rd Judicial District of New York told prosecutors and defense attorneys that they, along with Cuomo, are scheduled to appear in court virtually on Friday, just days after District Attorney David Soares announced he was no longer pursuing a charge against Cuomo for forcible touching.
Rita Glavin, an attorney for Cuomo, said on Friday the dismissal of the charges against the former governor proved the case was a “blatant political act by an astonishingly unprofessional and rogue sheriff,” an apparent reference to Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple, who brought the charges against Cuomo in October.
“No jury would have found [the accuser] credible. That is why this case was dismissed,” Glavin said on a Zoom call with reporters on Friday.
DISTRICT ATTORNEY DROPS FORCIBLE TOUCHING CHARGE AGAINST ANDREW CUOMO
Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi concurred, saying Friday, “This entire situation was a political manipulation and would be disproven when a non-corrupted legal review was conducted.”
“Facts matter — even in politics and even in Albany,” he continued in a statement shared with the Washington Examiner. “Stay tuned.”
Cuomo was originally scheduled to appear before the judge on Nov. 17, 2021, but the court date was delayed until January after the district attorney wrote in a letter to Trexler that Apple had jeopardized his ability to bring a robust case. Apple set off a “speedy trial clock” in bringing charges in October, thus requiring that Soares be ready to appear in court within 90 days or risk the dismissal of the charges, the letter to Trexler read.
“In order to reduce the risk of a procedural dismissal of this case, and with the understanding that the defendant is in agreement, the People are asking for an adjournment … to give my office time to continue with our independent and unbiased review of the facts in this case,” Soares wrote on Nov. 5 of last year.
Soares, who foreshadowed his decision to abandon the charges by calling the criminal complaint against Cuomo “potentially defective” last November, said on Tuesday his office concluded that it “cannot meet [its] burden” of proof at trial.
“While we found the complainant in this case cooperative and credible, after review of all the available evidence, we have concluded that we cannot meet our burden at trial. As such, we have notified the Court that we are declining to prosecute this matter and requesting the charges filed by the Albany County Sheriff be dismissed,” Soares said. “I, like most New Yorkers, remain deeply troubled by allegations like the ones at issue here. Such conduct has no place in government or in any workplace.”
Apple acknowledged that the announcement of the charges against Cuomo came “much” sooner than originally planned.
“We would have liked to have presented everything, sat down with the DA, and explained exactly what we had,” he said at an Oct. 29 press conference. “I would have also, out of courtesy, liked to have reached out to [Cuomo attorney Rita] Glavin and explained what we had and what the next process would be, but again, things change, and it doesn’t always work out as planned.”
But surrogates for Cuomo, who has denied all allegations of inappropriate touching, said the sheriff’s rush to serve charges proved his process was flawed.
“‘Accidentally’ filing a criminal charge without notification and consent of the prosecuting body doesn’t pass the laugh test, and this reeks of Albany politics and perhaps worse,” Azzopardi said on Oct. 28, 2021.
That same day, Apple announced Cuomo would be placed under arrest and criminally charged with forcible touching, a complaint that stemmed from the women whose allegations of sexual impropriety against the then-governor were vetted as part of state Attorney General Letitia James’s investigation. After months of investigating the claims from 11 Cuomo accusers, James revealed her findings in an Aug. 3, 2021, report that was seemingly corroborated by a separate investigation from the New York State Assembly, which unearthed a 12th accuser in its own Nov. 22, 2021, report.
Despite ultimately stepping down just three weeks after James revealed her findings, Cuomo has repeatedly railed against the attorney general’s “unjust” report, and the two, once political allies, have been verbally sparring ever since. In September, James slammed Cuomo for not taking “responsibility for his own conduct” after he blasted his ouster as “politics.”
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Several local law enforcement officials have declined to press charges against Cuomo in recent weeks. Nassau County’s district attorney announced on Dec. 23 that Cuomo would not be charged for allegedly inappropriately touching a state trooper in September 2019, and Westchester County’s district attorney followed suit, saying five days later it would not prosecute the former governor over “credible” claims of sexual misconduct that allegedly occurred in Mount Kisco, New York.
Azzopardi celebrated the district attorneys’ refusal to pursue charges, saying that they “have proven that what we said all along was correct — the law was not broken and not a single case has been brought.”
