Andrew Cuomo regularly joked about sex during his time in the Clinton administration, suggesting one senator wanted to lick his press aide’s thigh and that his Kennedy brothers-in-law were sleeping with the same woman, according to a new book.
Karen Hinton, who has accused Cuomo of sexual harassment, recalls alleged details of her former boss’s uncouth conduct in her new memoir, Penis Politics, an advance copy of which was obtained by the Washington Examiner and which has already prompted pushback from Cuomo’s team.
Long before Cuomo became governor of New York and the sexual harassment scandal that led to his resignation this summer, though he denies any inappropriate touching, Cuomo served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1997 to early 2000.
It was during that period that, Hinton writes, Cuomo invited her to a meeting with then-Sen. Trent Lott. Calling the Mississippi Republican a “shameless flirt,” Hinton recalls how Lott “sat close to” her in an uncomfortable situation about which Cuomo and other aides, whom Hinton called the “boy brigade,” would later laugh over.
“I thought Lott was going to lean right over and lick Karen’s thigh,” Cuomo told HUD aides, the book says.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Crossroad Strategies, a lobbying firm where Lott now works, for comment.
Though they may have laughed, members of the so-called boy brigade were often uncomfortable with Cuomo’s stories, according to Hinton, who writes one “sheepishly” told her Cuomo’s yarn about his Kennedy brothers-in-law. Cuomo was married to Robert Kennedy’s daughter, Kerry Kennedy, at the time.
“[They’re] f***ing the same woman. She likes to get f***ed in the a** and some days goes from one Kennedy house to the other to get it twice in one day,” Cuomo said of his brothers-in-law, the aide allegedly told Hinton.
Cuomo, puffing on a cigar, then said, “When you have anal sex with a woman, you own her soul,” Hinton recalls the staffer telling her.
Cuomo served as a Cabinet member under President Bill Clinton, another Democrat accused of sexual misconduct, which he denies, by a handful of women and impeached for a sordid affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
As Hinton would tell it, Clinton once gifted Cuomo cigars with a personalized message.
“Andrew was a known cigar guy, and Clinton had given him a very expensive humidor filled with illegal Cuban cigars, with a personal note that read ‘Don’t ask … Don’t tell,’ a play on the name of the Administration policy on accepting gays in the military,” Penis Politics says.
After reports emerged alleging Clinton used a cigar to engage in sexual activities with Lewinsky, Cuomo, waving his own cigar, laughingly said, “At least you can’t catch AIDS that way,” Hinton writes. The reception was an “uncomfortable silence from the staff,” Hinton recounts.
When Cuomo was invited to a meeting Hinton said was to “discuss how to manage the snowballing scandal” in 1998 after Clinton publicly said he “did not have sexual relations with” Lewinsky, “the suspicion was that there was something else other than vaginal intercourse,” prompting speculation from Cuomo and Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson, Hinton writes.
“I think we can probably defend oral sex,” Cuomo told Richardson, according to the book. “But I have to draw the line … at Presidential a** f***ing.”
Cuomo’s words gave way to actions after Hinton was no longer under his employ, according to Penis Politics.
The former press secretary received a call from Cuomo in November 2000 in which the future governor allegedly said, “Why don’t you come up to my room, and let’s debrief from today and go over tomorrow’s plan. And tell me how things are going with your new job and how [your daughter] Tali’s doing.”
Hinton, who says those “kind of catch-up meetings on the road in his hotel room” were not “unusual,” agreed to go to Cuomo’s hotel room where they greeted each other with a “friendly hug,” the book says.
“Andrew shut the door and sat on one couch, and I sat on the couch facing him. The lights had been dimmed, and then I began to wonder what exactly was going on,” writes Hinton, adding that Cuomo began to quiz her about the state of her marriage.
As Hinton became “uncomfortable with the turn of the discussion,” she stood to leave, at which point Cuomo “came closer and put his hands on [her] shoulders to say goodbye,” she writes. Cuomo proposed they “always help each other,” a statement with which Hinton says she agreed.
“Under the dim lights, Andrew put his arms around me and held me a bit too long and a bit too hard. I could tell that he was aroused,” Hinton writes. “I pulled away and said I should get some sleep. Andrew pulled me back in, even closer.”
The former press secretary then removed herself from his arms and “made a beeline out the door,” she says.
Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, slammed Hinton’s account, saying, “The closer she gets to publication, the more vile and ridiculous her claims get.”
“In 2018, when Ms. Hinton was not consumed with chasing headlines to sell a book, she wrote, ‘I’ve been fortunate to have male bosses, like Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio, who know how to be respectful of women even while being no-nonsense managers,'” he told the Washington Examiner. “We will have no further comment on her transparent attempts to profit off of a blatant rewriting of history.”
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Cuomo, who stepped down from the governorship on Aug. 24, was charged with forcible touching regarding a separate incident that allegedly occurred at the Executive Mansion, which he said “never” happened in testimony released Wednesday. The former governor is expected to appear in court on Jan. 7.
Penis Politics, published by the Sartoris Literary Group, is set to be released Dec. 1.
