Tuesday, June 29, 2021

29 June 2021: Allegations of Cuomo Sexual Harassment at HUD

Transcript: Mississippi native Karen Hinton discusses her storied political career

In the late 1990s, Andrew M. Cuomo served in the U.S. government as a member of President Bill Clinton's cabinet, specifically as the U.S. Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, from 1997 through 2000. Karen Hinton shared the following story during an interview with Mississippi Today's Bobby Harrison:

I’ve known him since 1995 and have had a on and off again type of work relationship with him. Literally as well as personally because he and I did not always get along, and we had disagreements, but you know, like most people you work with in that way, you try to figure out ways to work through the problem.

And he and I did, especially after I married a man who was good friends with him and his father, Mario Cuomo so I really had a reason to try to always have a good relationship as I could with him even though he and I often would disagree on paths to follow when I was his press secretary at HUD, but nonetheless I did have some issues with him.

And later on, several women came out publicly in New York and said that he had sexually harassed, sexually abused them when they worked for him when he was governor and the governor’s office. I was just taken aback by that, because I definitely have seen the same pattern of that behavior when he was at HUD.

It wasn’t as extreme as it has been in New York, but it was problematic for me as well as many other women I knew who worked at HUD. And I decided after I heard one woman in particular, talk about how he propositioned her in his office. She is very young. She’s 26, 25 years old. He is now my age. He’s 62, 63.

I was just appalled at that. And after all this time and all the things that I had been through, I just decided to tell my story as well so I gave an interview with the Washington Post about a moment where he had made a sexual overture to me long ago in 2000.

Later, she confirms she was interviewed by investigators from the New York Attorney General's office, where the following passage begins with her answer to the question of whether she feels confident the investigation will be thorough and produce results:

I do. They interviewed me, the investigators. And she does have private investigators who are taking this, who are handling the investigation. They’ve talked to me as well as many of the other women who have worked in the governor’s office, and they seem to me like you’re taking it very seriously. And so I have confidence that they will issue a report that will take these women seriously and won’t pass this up as confusion or as Andrew Cuomo has said, “misinterpretation of what he said, it was good intentions on his part, they just didn’t understand what he meant.”

I mean, and these harassment cases and sexual abuse cases, the perpetrator always comes up with another version of reality. And they twist things around in such a way so it makes a woman appear to be a liar or to be, you know, confused or incapable of understanding what was happening.

So that really has to stop and these women have to be taken seriously. And my incident happened so long ago because it was in 2000, you know, two decades ago. And because it happened in California, not in New York is not that relevant to them, but I think they were interested in my observation on the pattern over time.

So we’ll see. We’ll see what happens when they issue their report.

For more background into Hinton's allegations, here's her Washington Post interview from 6 March 2021. We haven't focused much on Hinton's allegations, but here's where she has appeared in the timeline:

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