New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo cut off a reporter who pressed him on whether he would resign if sexual harassment allegations against him were found to be true.
“If the attorney general’s report concludes that under state law you did sexually harass employees in violation of state law, will you resign? Yes or no?” New York Law Journal reporter Ryan Tarinelli asked Cuomo during a virtual news conference.
“Let’s see what the review says, and then, we’ll take it from there,” the governor responded.
Tarinelli asked Cuomo to “clarify what that means,” but he only repeated his previous response verbatim.
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“It just does,” Tarinelli said when his line suddenly went blank.
“OK,” Cuomo said.
“Yeah, I’m not gonna have any comment on a review that is underway beyond that. I was attorney general of the state. I said to everyone during a review, please don’t comment during the pendency of the review. Let the review go on,” the governor explained. “At the appropriate time, I will have a comment about the review, and about the facts, about the truth. So, I’m looking forward to that. But now is not the time.”
Tarinelli then took to Twitter and accused the governor of intentionally cutting off his line.
“Yep, I got cut off while trying to follow up on this point,” the reporter said.
Another reporter then picked up the line of questioning for Tarinelli, reminding the governor that he had previously admitted to being “huggy by nature” and asked “if since then, you’ve changed your behavior or you feel it’s necessary that you should do that when you greet people professionally?”
“You’ve watched me in public for many, many years, right? So, you know how I behave. The people of New York know how I behave,” Cuomo said. “But let’s see what the review says. The Assembly’s doing a review. The attorney general’s doing a review. I’ll then tell you what I think. And then, we’ll go from there.”
Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi admitted that Tarinelli was cut off intentionally, but he argued that the decision was made because reporters are only allowed one “follow-up” question under the terms of an agreement reached months ago with the Legislative Correspondents Association.
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But New York Now reporter Dan Clark, who said that he was the president of the correspondents association at the time the deal was struck, insisted no such rule was agreed to.
“That did not happen,” Clark said.
