After Cuomo’s closest aides testify, now it’s his turn

When investigators from the New York state attorney general’s office face Gov Andrew M Cuomo for the first time on Saturday, they will do so with an abundance of testimony and evidence.

Over the past four months, lawyers investigating sexual harassment claims against Cuomo have interviewed the women who have accused him, members of his security detail and other witnesses. They have also subpoenaed a cache of state records and have collected messages and data from Blackberry devices of his senior staff members, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Most recently, investigators questioned Cuomo’s closest aides and confidantes, including Melissa DeRosa, secretary to the governor; Beth Garvey, his acting counsel; Judith Mogul, special counsel; Richard Azzopardi, a senior adviser; and Larry Schwartz, a former top aide, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Now, the accused himself is among the last to be questioned.

The outcome of the inquiry remains uncertain. But Cuomo, who has denied wrongdoing, has repeatedly said he is eager to tell his side of the story since the accusations first emerged earlier this year, leading to a separate impeachment investigation and calls for his resignation.

The governor, a Democrat in his third term, will have the opportunity to do just that on Saturday, when he is interrogated in Albany by the investigation’s top lawyers, Joon H. Kim and Anne L Clark. They were hired in March by Letitia James, the attorney general, to conduct the investigation.

The governor’s deposition suggests that the investigation may be entering its final phases, and that a public report with the lawyers’ findings could be issued in the coming weeks. The inquiry could, however, continue if the lawyers pursue other leads or seek follow-up interviews with Cuomo or other witnesses.

Kim and Clark have been scrutinizing the details of the harassment claims, at times asking for corroborating documents or witnesses as well as leads on other potential allegations. They have also asked broader questions about the overall workplace culture in the governor’s office, inquiring about other potential discriminatory behavior, according to at least four people who have sat in on the interviews.

The legal team led by Kim and Clark is also examining whether Cuomo and his aides followed state protocol in responding to complaints of sexual harassment, and whether they might have broken any laws, destroyed potential evidence, interfered with the investigation or retaliated against the women who have accused Cuomo, people familiar with the interviews said.

A former member of Cuomo’s staff who was interviewed under oath said investigators asked whether the work environment when she was there was hostile or toxic, with some of the questions focusing on the behavior of female supervisors or potentially insensitive remarks by the governor.

“It was not just about sexual harassment,” said the woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she was not permitted to discuss her deposition publicly. “The questions involved the nature of working there, the environment, the types of projects that we were asked to work on.”

Cuomo goes into the interview at a critical juncture in his tenure, as he confronts overlapping state and federal investigations, at least one of them criminal, into whether his aides obscured the full extent of nursing home deaths during the pandemic, and whether he illegally used state resources to write a book about leadership last year for which he received $5.1 million.

In the past few months, the governor has sought to steer attention away from the investigations and scandals that have battered his administration. His strategy has mostly consisted of staging events meant to generate feel-good headlines, with a focus on the state’s economic rebound that portrays him as firmly in command.

Cuomo, ever mindful of his public image, has kept a close eye on public opinion, intent on regaining support from voters and rehabilitating his reputation before a report is released, and, possibly, a reelection campaign next year. He has paid his longtime polling firm, Global Strategy Group, more than $155,000 this year to conduct polling, according to campaign filings released this week.

The governor has also used some of the $2.5 million he raised this year — the second-lowest total for the first half of a year during his tenure — to pay his personal legal expenses. His campaign paid $285,000 to the law firm of Rita Glavin, who is representing him in the sexual harassment investigation.

In recent weeks, members of Cuomo’s staff have increasingly sought to discredit James’ inquiry as politically motivated, a sharp departure from the governor’s rhetoric months ago when he initially expressed trust in her capacity to oversee the investigation.

In a statement, Azzopardi said the governor’s office was cooperating fully with the investigation by making staff members and documents available.

“What has been unforeseen is the shocking number of politically motivated leaks that have been allowed to happen during what is increasingly demonstrating itself to be the one-sided nature of the attorney general’s review,” he added.

A spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office declined to comment.

Investigators appear to have interviewed most, if not all, of the women who have accused the governor of sexual harassment or misconduct.

Charlotte Bennett, a former aide who accused Cuomo of making sexual advances in his Albany office, met with investigators for eight hours in May to testify under oath. She also turned over dozens of messages and other records that she says support her claims.

Bennett’s allegations, which The New York Times was first to report, spurred the attorney general’s investigation, as well as a seemingly heartfelt statement from Cuomo in which he did not deny her claims, but apologized for his behavior. He has since flatly denied any wrongdoing.

“Clearly they are looking, in a very broad sense, at the issues of workplace culture and whether the governor maintained a sexually hostile work environment, which is clearly against the law,” Debra Katz, Bennett’s lawyer, said. “We hope and expect that they will be equally rigorous in the questioning of the governor, who has a lot of explaining to do.”

A female aide who accused Cuomo of reaching under her blouse to grope her after she was summoned to the governor’s Executive Mansion in Albany was subpoenaed in May. The lawyer for the aide, who has not been publicly identified, would not say whether she had been interviewed, but he said that she would comply with any subpoena.

Lindsey Boylan, a former administration official who said Cuomo gave her an unwanted kiss on the lips, was subpoenaed, but her lawyer did not respond to requests for comment on Friday about whether she had been interviewed.

Investigators are believed to be looking at whether members of Cuomo’s staff sought to retaliate against Boylan after she made her initial accusation against the governor last year. People close to Cuomo circulated a letter in December that described Boylan’s claim as politically motivated and also disclosed personnel complaints that had been filed against her, The Times reported in March.

Investigators have also gathered testimony about Cuomo’s behavior going as far back to his time as federal housing secretary under President Bill Clinton.

Karen Hinton, who worked closely with Cuomo at the federal housing agency but has since fallen out with him, said she spoke with Kim and Clark for over an hour in an informal interview that was not under oath. The subjects discussed included harassment in the office and what she described as his flirtatious and abusive behavior.

Hinton said she had shared a number of anecdotes, including one about an instance in which she said Cuomo inappropriately embraced her in a California hotel room after a work event in 2000. Cuomo has previously described Hinton’s allegations as false, calling her “a longtime political adversary.”

“They sort of let me tell my stories and they were very interested,” Hinton said of the investigators. “They asked me questions, but they didn’t tell me what they thought.”

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