4 August 2021: Team Cuomo's Cover Up of Cuomo Harassment of Female State Trooper

Cuomo administration covered up his request to get female trooper

The female state police officer described in this report is Cuomo's 11th known sexual harassment victim.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's administration, including the State Police, allegedly misled the Times Union in December about the governor's request to have a young female trooper that he found attractive appointed to his protective detail in 2018 — a job for which she did not meet the minimum standards at the time that she was given the position.

The Times Union had asked both Cuomo's office and the State Police about the female trooper's appointment to the coveted job on the governor's Protective Services Unit — an appointment that was made after the governor met the now-30-year-old trooper during a ceremony at the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge in New York City in November 2017.

The governor, according to a report issued Tuesday by the state attorney general's office, directed that the trooper be offered the job and subsequently sexually harassed her after she was reassigned to his protective detail two months later.

The attorney general's investigation said the female trooper, after joining the governor's detail, endured unwanted touching and advances from Cuomo, "including running his hand across her stomach, from her belly button to her right hip, while she held a door open for him at an event ... running his finger down her back, from the top of her neck down her spine to the middle of her back, saying 'hey, you,' while she was standing in front of him in an elevator ... kissing her ... in front of another trooper and asking to kiss her on another occasion, which she deflected; and ... making sexually suggestive and gender-based comments, including asking her to help him find a girlfriend and describing his criteria for a girlfriend as someone who '(c)an handle pain,.'"

State Police sources told the Times Union last year that the minimum qualifications for appointment to the protective detail were reduced by one year so that the reassignment of the trooper, who joined the State Police in 2015, could be made. Cuomo personally ordered the move, a source had told the paper, because he "liked the way she looked."

The state attorney general's report outlines details of how the administration worked with the State Police to mislead the Times Union about the circumstances of the trooper's reassignment, including falsely stating that she met the minimum qualification of three years on the job to be appointed to the governor's Protective Services Unit.

Ick.