New York Assembly report further corroborates misconduct by former Governor Cuomo

Former Governor Andrew Cuomo is guilty of sexual harassment acts, tampering with New York state’s reporting on COVID nursing home numbers, and using the state’s employees to help personally benefit himself, according to a new report.

On Monday, the Judiciary Committee of the New York State Assembly released their own findings into the behavior and conduct of Andrew Cuomo. The investigation kicked off with the original intent of seeing if impeachable offenses were involved.

Commentary from New York State Assembly members say former Governor Cuomo would’ve "been impeached had he not resigned."

This is a separate report from the inquiry by New York Attorney General Lettia James that was released back in August. The 168-page document ultimately spiraled in the public eye as a motivating factor leading to Andrew Cuomo’s resignation from office.

Despite Cuomo no longer being Governor, the state assembly continued with their work anyway seeing as how there’s many different ongoing probes by authorities into his actions.

When it comes to the sexual harassment charges levied against Cuomo, this newest report helps correct the record in a way helpful to his victims (despite claims by Cuomo’s attorney that the Assembly’s report "simply parrots" the Attorney General’s findings).

Other moments include the fact that the former Governor of New York was first approached for a book deal as early as March 2020.

Allegations against Cuomo had four separate categories:

• Sexual Harassment: misconduct by Andrew Cuomo when it came to his interactions with various females is what gained the most attraction in the public eye when it came to scandals. The Assembly report helps back claims beyond previous highly publicized testimonies by Charlotte Bennett and Lindsey Boylan. It adds further corroboration towards claims of inappropriate behavior by Cuomo made onto his protective detail "Trooper #1," and also helps correct the record in favor of Cuomo’s former executive assistant Brittany Commisso. The investigation by the New York State Assembly nailed down the date of Brittany’s encounter to December 7th, 2020. It was previously stated by the Attorney General’s report to be November 16th, 2020, the caveat of admitting to not knowing the "exact date" at that time was also brought up.
• Cuomo’s COVID memoirs: While the COVID pandemic was ongoing, former Governor Andrew Cuomo made state employees assist him in putting together a book about it. Andrew Cuomo’s people said that staffers had "volunteered" to help with the book, but the New York Assembly’s report cites a source that describes it as made obligatory. "Another senior state official complained in a text message to a colleague that work on the Book was compromising the official’s ability to work on COVID-related matters," the findings say. The analysis makes it clear that Governor Cuomo using state resources for personal gain is an ethics violation. Andrew Cuomo is said to have made $5.12 million from the book. Despite the Joint Commission of Public Ethics reversal to support the book’s creation, New York Post reports that Cuomo might be able to keep the money depending on what kind of litigation ensues.
• Nursing Homes: the integrity of reporting in New York’s nursing homes was cast into doubt started immediately after Cuomo issued a controversial executive order in March 2020 saying incoming patients could not be denied admittance based on suspicion of COVID. The New York Assembly’s findings show that former Governor Cuomo’s staff had "substantially revised" a July 2020 report done by the state’s Department of Health. Cuomo’s people softened potential blowback for Andrew Cuomo, but the report was released as if New York’s DOH made these conclusions on their own accord. It’s through these circumstances that New York’s DOH report on nursing homes manipulated the framing of COVID statistics by "choosing to report in-facility deaths only." In contrast, out-of-facility deaths were written off as too "distracting" to add, according to some of the report’s sources.
• The Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge: one of the lesser-known scandals was what Andrew Cuomo knew about the safety concerns surrounding the construction of a bridge amid reported "deficiencies in the bolts" used for the project. The report’s findings on the matter were inconclusive but the document says that information related to the matter was passed on to the "appropriate authorities" for further review.

When reports of Andrew Cuomo being potentially arrested were circulating back in October, it was made clear that groping is treated as a misdemeanor sex crime. In response to the report, Cuomo accuser Charlotte Bennett has called for Cuomo to use his millions of dollars to make a display of remorse for his actions.