An attorney representing former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is calling for an independent review of Attorney General Letitia James’s bombshell report that precipitated the then governor’s resignation.
Rita Glavin submitted a letter calling for an independent review of James’s report, arguing the attorney general had an “obvious conflict” investigating Cuomo, given speculation that she may run for the governorship.
“What happened here was wrong, and the reason I sent the letter to the attorney general today … is because process is everything that our country’s based upon,” she said during a press conference Wednesday afternoon. “You cannot run out, drop a report accusing someone, anyone, of all types of misconduct and then disavow any legal responsibility to have to defend it in any legal forum.”
Glavin argued in her roughly 150-page submission James erred in her selection of employment discrimination attorney Anne Clark, a “plaintiff’s attorney” in violation of James’s pledge to Cuomo “that she would not appoint a plaintiff’s lawyer,” and former acting U.S Attorney for the Southern District of New York Joon Kim, who had “a long history of investigating governor Cuomo … while he had been at the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” as independent attorneys leading her investigation.
“Those appointments were not by mistake,” she said. “The appointments were done to bring in people that had a particular bent, a bias about the subject matter, the governor, and the executive chamber, and the resulting report … bears that out.”
The attorney argued James’s report contained “glaring omissions and deficiencies” and asked for an opportunity for it to be “amended, corrected, and supplemented.”
“Because of the glaring deficiencies and flaws in that report, which extraordinarily prejudiced the governor, ousted him from office, overturned an election, and disenfranchised the votes of 3.6 million New Yorkers, it has to be corrected,” she said.
Glavin, who maintained Cuomo has not participated in any wrongdoing, also called on James to terminate her pending criminal investigation into Cuomo over his alleged misuse of state resources in promoting his book, saying she “cannot credibly” investigate the matter given her political ambitions.
Fabien Levy, the attorney general’s press secretary and senior adviser, said Glavin’s comments amounted to a “baseless attack.”
“Another day, another baseless attack by the former governor who resigned so he didn’t have to participate in an impeachment hearing. The most concerning part of today’s charade was the former governor’s attempt to stifle a legal criminal investigation into allegations that he used state resources for a book deal and personal profit,” Levy said in an email to the Washington Examiner, adding James would not be “bullied into shutting down this investigation.”
In April, James received a referral from Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli to investigate whether “public resources [were] used in the development and promotion of the governor’s book.” So far, she has issued at least one subpoena to the Joint Commission on Public Ethics for its records on the book, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.
The former governor and the attorney general, once political allies, have been verbally sparring ever since James announced the findings of her Aug. 3 bombshell report concluding Cuomo had sexually harassed at least 11 women during his gubernatorial tenure. Last month, James slammed Cuomo for not taking “responsibility for his own conduct” after Cuomo blasted his ouster as “politics.”
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The former governor, who resigned on Aug. 24, has repeatedly denied all allegations of wrongdoing, railing against James’s “unjust” report in his farewell address to the state.
