14 August 2021: Editorial - NY Assembly Needs To Show Its Work on Cuomo Impeachment

Show your work: The Assembly is right to suspend impeachment proceedings when Cuomo resigns, but must share what it found

The editors of the New York Daily News are on board with the NY Assembly dropping its effort to impeach Andrew M. Cuomo in light of his announced resignation. But they want the Assembly to make the evidence it collected in its impeachment probe public. In the following excerpt, we've filtered out the editors' diversion into discussing federal vs state impeachment laws to get to their main point:

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie was right to announce that once Gov. Cuomo is former Gov. Cuomo on Aug. 24, the Judiciary Committee will end its impeachment proceedings against him. Still, the information developed in the panel’s investigation about Cuomo’s alleged transgressions, which Heastie said are credible, must be published and not buried or only referred to prosecutors....

... the Judiciary Committee has spent months of time and millions of dollars probing Cuomo, on the harassment allegations, on COVID nursing home death counts and his COVID book and even more. Those findings, with or without the panel’s conclusions, deserve a public airing. Yes, Cuomo will soon be gone, but if there were transgression, they should be known.

There seemed to be overwhelming support in the committee for proceeding on impeachment before Cuomo said he was quitting based on the evidence collected. That evidence is still there.

Meantime, rather than going solely on Heastie’s word to seal up the probe, why doesn’t Chairman Chuck Lavine hold a public meeting and have the committee members debate and vote? Let’s hear from them if they want to close it down and hide the evidence and testimony they’ve accumulated. We bet most members will choose transparency over secrecy.

The New York Daily Times editors may not be familiar with how politicians in New York will act when given the opportunity (and perhaps incentives) to look the other way at the misconduct of one of their own.