Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo filed an ethics complaint against the state’s attorney general, Letitia James.
In the 48-page filing, Cuomo alleged James purposefully misled the public about sexual assault allegations against him and used the inquiry to pursue her own personal and political gains. He claimed that James’s report on 11 sexual assault allegations against him repeatedly implied that he was guilty despite the investigation itself finding that most of the accusations did not constitute sexual assault. His complaint extends to the conduct of two hand-picked aides to the attorney general: Joon Kim and Anne Clark.
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“Fundamentally, the Attorney General and her investigators issued a purposefully inaccurate and misleading Report on August 3, 2021 … bombastically and repeatedly implying that I sexually harassed eleven women, even though the allegations made by most of the eleven women did not constitute sexual harassment under state or federal law, even assuming arguendo the truth of those allegations,” he wrote in the filing. “Indeed, the title of an August 6, 2021 press release issued by the Attorney General’s office and published on her official website furthered that false narrative: ‘Statement from the Attorney General’s Office in Response to Attacks on 11 Women Harassed by Governor Cuomo.’”
“The Attorney General’s August 3, 2021 press conference announcing the Report was meant to be prejudicial and highly inflammatory, and to villainize me in the public eye, and to mislead the public and the press that I had sexually harassed eleven women, which simply was not true … but that was the narrative the press reported, over and over, without correction or rebuttal by the Attorney General,” he added.
The complaint, filed to a grievance committee in the state’s court system, could be dismissed or lead to an investigation and even disciplinary action, including disbarment, per the New York Times.
James, Kim, and Clark all deny the allegations, pushing back against the narrative set by Cuomo.
“Mr. Cuomo resigned after an independent investigation revealed that he preyed on multiple women who worked for him. New Yorkers are ready to move forward and close this sordid chapter in our state’s history,” a spokeswoman for James’s office told Axios. She added that James and the pair “hold themselves to the highest ethical standards.”
The former governor resigned in disgrace in August of last year after a flurry of sexual assault allegations led most of his allies to abandon him, including President Joe Biden, who asked him to resign, according to the New York Times. His resignation was announced just one week after James’s report. Cuomo has apologized for making any women uncomfortable but denies any inappropriate touching.
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Cuomo has recently gone through great efforts to rehabilitate his image, with these efforts intensifying in the past month, seemingly emboldened by an Aug. 16 court victory wherein the judge denied the request by the attorney general for Cuomo to return the $5.1 million he made from his memoir book deal for American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From the COVID-19 Pandemic. One report found that the former governor had spent $60,000 on Facebook ads over the past month, aiming to portray his resignation as a consequence of “#MeToo excess,” according to Politico.
