An attorney for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo has served the sheriff of Albany County, New York, with a preservation notice regarding his “rogue” investigation, a representative for Cuomo announced Saturday.
An attorney for Cuomo, who has repeatedly denied allegations of inappropriate touching, served Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple with a “preservation of records” relating to his investigation into Cuomo after the sheriff announced Friday that the former governor would be arrested and summoned to appear in court next month.
“What occurred here was a clear abuse of power by Sheriff Apple and we plan to get to the bottom of it,” Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, said alongside Saturday’s release of the letter to Apple.
CUOMO TO BE ARRESTED, APPEAR IN COURT FOR FORCIBLE TOUCHING CHARGE: SHERIFF
Rita Glavin, Cuomo’s attorney, asked Apple to preserve all records relating to communications with the alleged victim and her attorney, legislators, and the press, to whom Apple or someone in his office “unlawfully leaked grand jury information.”
“We will be asking for an investigation of unlawful grand jury leaks, and we are also exploring legal remedies for such leaks,” Glavin said.
Azzopardi slammed Apple’s “attempt to deflect from his bizarre and unprofessional rogue investigation” and “clear abuse of power.”
“Albany Sheriff Craig Apple claimed there was an ‘overwhelming amount of evidence’ gathered in this case,” he wrote Saturday. “However, every item listed by his investigator only verifies uncontested fact that this employee was in and out of the Governor’s mansion as part of her job — there is zero corroborating evidence that a crime occurred. … There is no corroborating evidence of the claim made against the Governor because it did not happen.”
Apple dismissed Azzopardi’s broadsides against him, including a Friday statement slamming Apple’s “unprecedented” actions as an “abuse of power and misconduct demonstrated by this Cowboy Sheriff.”
“This is how they play. … I’ve been called much worse,” he said, later calling his office “an apolitical organization.”
The sheriff confirmed Friday that Cuomo, who was criminally charged with forcible touching Thursday, will be placed under arrest and expected to appear in court on Nov. 17 in connection to the case.
“Yes, yes,” Apple responded when asked whether “arrest” was “an accurate word to use in this situation” and whether “the governor is going to be placed under arrest at some point.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who announced roughly one hour before Apple’s press conference that she’s running for governor in 2022, said Thursday’s charges validated her bombshell Aug. 3 report, which concluded Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women during his time in public office.
“From the moment my office received the referral to investigate allegations that former Gov. Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women, we proceeded without fear or favor,” the attorney general’s office said Thursday. “The criminal charges brought today against Mr. Cuomo for forcible touching further validate the findings in our report.”
Thursday’s criminal complaint against Cuomo, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Examiner, alleged that on Dec. 7, 2020, while at the New York governor’s mansion, Cuomo “did intentionally, and for no legitimate purpose, forcibly place his hand under the blouse shirt of the victim [REDACTED] and onto her intimate body part, specifically, the victim’s left breast.” The complaint says that “a person is guilty of Forcible Touching when such person intentionally, and for no legitimate purpose, forcibly touches the sexual or other intimate parts of another person for the purpose of degrading or abusing such person, or for the purpose of gratifying the actor’s sexual desire.”
The charges met with some confusion as the criminal summons was issued without the consent of the alleged victim, according to the Albany Times-Union, which reported that no final decision had been made by the sheriff’s department or the district attorney’s office on whether to file charges, according to unnamed sources.
Surrogates for Cuomo pointed to this confusion as evidence that the 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 Thursday. “The fact that the AG — as predicted — is about to announce a run for governor is lost on no one. The truth about what happened with this cowboy sheriff will come out.”
Apple acknowledged the announcement of the charges 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 Friday. “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.”
Cuomo resigned from office on Aug. 24 after the release of James’s report, elevating then-Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul to the governorship. Hazel Crampton-Hays, a representative for Hochul, declined to comment on Thursday’s charges against Cuomo.
Even after Cuomo stepped down, Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple said he would continue his inquiry.
“It was never about his office, although I appreciate him putting the people of New York first and stepping aside,” Apple said in August.
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Despite stepping down, Cuomo has repeatedly railed against James’s “unjust” report, and last week, Glavin called for an independent review into the attorney general’s report, which contained “glaring omissions and deficiencies,” the Cuomo attorney argued.
The former governor and the attorney general, once political allies, have been verbally sparring ever since James announced the findings of her report. Last month, James slammed Cuomo for not taking “responsibility for his own conduct” after Cuomo blasted his ouster as “politics.”
