31 October 2021: Cuomo Defense Attorney Expands Smear Campaign

Cuomo lawyer asks sheriff to save investigation records

This report picks up on Andrew M. Cuomo's personal attorney's attempt to make it sound like something nefarious may be going on within the offices of the Albany County sheriff and prosecutor, but it's really an almost standard defense request in any criminal case. If it weren't Cuomo, whose PR team has chosen to publicize the request, it wouldn't be news.

A lawyer for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’ wants the sheriff who charged the Democrat with groping a woman to preserve records of any communications his office had with the alleged victim, journalists or other investigators.

A city court in Albany this week issued a summons charging Cuomo with forcible touching after a criminal complaint was filed by Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple. Cuomo has claimed that the charge was based on flimsy evidence and was politically motivated.

In a letter to Apple on Saturday, Cuomo lawyer Rita Glavin demanded that the sheriff's office preserve all records related to the case, including any notes of conversations it had with the woman who accused the ex-governor of groping her, Brittany Commisso.

It also asked for records of any communications with two legal teams that investigated Cuomo's conduct, one that worked for the state Assembly and another for Attorney General Letitia James.

A preservation letter is a standard legal tactic. Criminal defendants are entitled to a broad scope of evidence and other material related to an investigation, which is typically turned over before trial.

Other than the lack of direct coordination between sheriff's office and county prosecutor before the filing of the criminal misdeanor complaint for a high profile alleged perpetrator, we're not seeing anything out of the ordinary in their handling of the case.

Speaking of which, that leads to this other complaint publicized by the Cuomo PR and legal defense team:

Cuomo attorney says sheriff leaked grand jury secrets in sex crime probe

Cuomo's legal defense team is continuing its history of smear tactics against anyone not on Team Cuomo. Note the language being used by Andrew M. Cuomo's personal attorney in the following excerpt:

An attorney for Andrew Cuomo on Saturday suggested the county sheriff's office that has filed a misdemeanor sex complaint against the former New York governor leaked secret grand jury testimony to the press.

In a letter to Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple, attorney Rita Glavin served formal notice demanding that all records related to the sheriff's office investigation of Cuomo be preserved, in a probe Cuomo described on Saturday as "rogue".

On Friday Apple rejected accusations from Cuomo's camp that his investigation was politically motivated. Cuomo's attorney called the timing of Thursday's criminal complaint "suspect", as it was made on the eve of New York Attorney General Letitia James's announcement that she was running for New York governor.

Here are two relevant entries from the timeline:

• 8 March 2021: NY Lawmakers Want Cuomo Gone - Links to a report announcing the hiring of the attorneys who would investigate Andrew M. Cuomo's alleged sexual harassment of several women, marking the effective beginning of the attorney general's probe.
• 3 August 2021: The NY Attorney General's Report on Probe of Cuomo Sexual Harassment Allegations

The elapsed time between these events is 4 months, 26 days. Now, let's look at the elapsed time between when the Albany County Sheriff indicated they would investigate the allegations of forcible touching by Cuomo within Albany County, to when charges were filed:

• 8 August 2021: Cuomo to Face Criminal Investigation by Albany County Sheriff
• 28 October 2021: Cuomo Charged with "Forcible Touching" in Criminal Misdemeanor

The elapsed time here is 2 months, 20 days. That's a little over half the time taken by the attorney general's probe that covered the allegations of 11 women. There's no indication of anything either being rushed or drawn out to specifically coincide with James' 29 October 2021 announcement she would run for the Democratic party nomination for New York governor.

But wait, there's more:

• 11 August 2021: Criminal Investigations of Cuomo Sexual Harassment To Continue

There are many more criminal investigation shoes to drop. Cuomo's "forcible touching" criminal misdemeanor case in Albany County is just the first.

But wait, what about the victim who was on the receiving end of Andrew M. Cuomo's alleged forcible touching?

Churchill: Brittany Commisso's courage is extraordinary

Albany Times-Union columnist Chris Churchill anticipates how Cuomo's defense team will seek to proceed based on how they've acted to date:

On Twitter, for instance, an army of Cuomo Bots, mostly anonymous, work daily to savage Commisso and the other women with claims baseless and misogynistic. Who are these people? Why do they bother?

Glavin, the former governor's attorney, isn't much better. Attacking the credibility of Cuomo's accusers, she has suggested Commisso is a mercenary in search of post-divorce income. Glavin never says how Commisso would make money on this, and it's absurd to think that accusing a boss would be good for anyone's career, but that's beside the point.

It's a tried-and-true trope, you see, so the lawyer is going to use it. (If Glavin continues down this path, she may soon claim Commisso asked for it by wearing skirts that showed off her knees.)

The Team Cuomo effort is about intimidation, of course — about convincing Commisso that going forward with her criminal complaint isn't worth the nightmare that would follow. Because we can know, as sure as the moon will rise, that Cuomo is beyond desperate to avoid the humiliation of walking into that courthouse on Morton Avenue.

It would be a media circus for the ages, news transmitted to Bakersfield, Bangkok and beyond. Even in a state that has seen more than its share of elected officials led away in handcuffs, the scene would be extraordinary.

A former governor, the son of a governor, forced into that court? A man who until recently lived in that mansion atop the hill?

This old town has seen some things, but it hasn't seen anything quite like that.

And that's all the Cuomo criminal news of note from the last weekend of October 2021. Although our main focus is Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals, we anticipate Cuomo's legal team using similar tactics when the criminal and civil cases associated with the deaths advance in the courts, which is why we're following this case. We'll try to condense our analysis of this activity into stand-alone articles like this one.

30 October 2021: Cuomo Albany County Sex Crime Probe Handled Like Ordinary Case

Cuomo criminal complaint was fallout of separate investigations

This report draws more directly and deeply upon the Albany Times-Union's contacts within Albany County's prosecutors office and sheriff's office than the Associated Press report that first reported the filing of criminal "forcible touching" misdemeanor charges against Andrew M. Cuomo. It indicates Cuomo's case was handled more like an ordinary case rather than one involving a celebrity or powerful politician would have been:

The unexpected filing of a criminal complaint against former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Thursday came after the Albany County Sheriff's Office and the office of Albany County District Attorney David Soares have been conducting separate investigations of a woman's allegations that Cuomo groped her during a work-related encounter at the Executive Mansion last year.

Both agencies had interviewed the alleged victim, Brittany Commisso, but the district attorney's case has been part of a secret grand jury investigation; the sheriff's department had used court-authorized search warrants to gather evidence, including electronic records they said supported the woman's account of her Dec. 7 visit to the mansion.

The parallel investigations collided this week when a sheriff's investigator who had been gathering evidence since Commisso filed a complaint with the sheriff's office in August went to City Court and filed her own affidavit in support of a summons that was subsequently issued charging Cuomo with misdemeanor forcible touching.

The summons, authorized by a City Court judge, was issued within minutes, and a day before members of the sheriff's and district attorney's offices were scheduled to meet to evaluate the progress of their respective investigations and decide how to move forward, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

That meeting was canceled after the summons was issued.

Soares and Brian D. Premo, Commisso's attorney, issued separate statements on Thursday saying they had been unaware that a criminal complaint was going to be filed. Although police agencies often file such complaints — especially those involving misdemeanor charges — without consulting prosecutors, several attorneys interviewed by the Times Union said it was not the normal procedure for such a high-profile case.

That last bit is a positive sign, in that it suggests Albany County's investigators were treating the probe like a regular case involving non-celebrity or politically influential individuals. Despite that, other reports indicate Andrew M. Cuomo can expect to benefit from preferential treatment.

In addition to describing the kind of evidence collected to support the filing of the criminal misdemeanor complaint against Andrew M. Cuomo, the report provides a window on how the Albany County officials are interacting with the state attorney general's office and the New York Assembly's investigators assembling the findings from their impeachment probe:

On Friday, Apple said that he has never spoken directly to the attorney general about the case, only to her staff. He confirmed that his office has also compared evidence with Davis Polk, the law firm conducting the Assembly's investigation of Cuomo.

Apple said that before contacting the Assembly's investigators from that law firm, he consulted with attorneys who informed him it was not improper for the sheriff's department and attorneys with David Polk to share notes.

That last bit confirms the Albany County investigation has largely been independent of the state attorney general's investigation. That independence weakens one of the long running arguments Cuomo's personal attorney Rita Glavin has been pursuing, in which she's alleged without evidence that the state attorney general's report was produced to harm Andrew M. Cuomo's re-election prospects while burnishing Letitia James' credentials ahead of her just announced run for governor.

29 October 2021: Letitia James Announces Run for NY Governor

Letitia James officially launches bid for NY governor against Kathy Hochul

NY State Attorney General Letitia "Tish" James is throwing her hat into the ring in running for the Democratic Party nomination for New York Governor:

State Attorney General Letitia James officially launched her bid for governor Friday.

James, whose investigative report found that former Gov. Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed or mistreated 11 women and forced him from office, will challenge Gov. Kathy Hochul and possibly city Public Advocate Jumaane Williams in what is expected to be a fierce Democratic primary.

Her announcement comes a day after Cuomo was charged with groping a former aide in Albany’s Executive Mansion — a crime that could send him to jail for a year if he’s convicted. The forcible touching allegation against Cuomo from executive staffer Brittany Commisso was laid out in the attorney general’s harassment report.

The attorney general also released a damning report in January that found the Cuomo administration had vastly undercounted the number of nursing home residents who died from the coronavirus.

“As I’ve traveled all around New York state, I have witnessed too many working families struggling to make ends meet, and it’s clear that the status quo just won’t do,” James said in a statement.

“New Yorkers need a governor who isn’t afraid to stand up to powerful interests on behalf of the vulnerable. Throughout my career, I’ve taken on big forces and New Yorkers know I will never back down when it comes to fighting for them. Today, I am proud to announce my candidacy for governor of New York so we can bring transformational change that uplifts all New Yorkers.”

If James chooses, she has an easy path to differentiate herself from Hochul on a policy that matters: cleaning out the enforcers of Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive and holding Cuomo accountable for the excess COVID deaths that resulted among New York's nursing home residents.

29 October 2021: Reaction of Cuomo Accusers to Criminal Sex Charge Filing and How Cuomo Will Be Treated

Reaction of Cuomo Sexual Harassment Accusers to Filing of Cuomo Sex Crime Charges

New York City's WABC reports on the reaction of several of the women who alleged they were sexually harassed by former NY Governor Andrew M. Cuomo to the filing of criminal charges for the "forcible touching" of Brittany Commisso in Albany County:

But as you'll see in this next story, Cuomo will benefit from some special treatment:

Cuomo Won't Be Arrested or Paraded for Cameras After Sex Crime Charge, Sheriff Says

This report indicates Cuomo's image will be protected:

Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo won't be arrested or marched in front of cameras after being charged with a misdemeanor sex crime, the Albany County sheriff said Friday morning.

Cuomo was charged with misdemeanor forcible touching on Thursday for an alleged incident at the state's Executive Mansion last December.

He is due in court Nov. 17 to answer for the charge, but Sheriff Craig Apple Sr. said Cuomo's detractors shouldn't anticipate seeing the former governor in handcuffs.

"I don't believe they'll be a perp walk or handcuffs, we're not looking to showboat anything," Apple told Talk1300 radio. The sheriff did say Cuomo would be fingerprinted and photographed when he surrenders.

That means there will be a mug shot of Andrew M. Cuomo. What odds do you give he'll smile for the camera?

29 October 2021: Analysis - What to Expect from Cuomo's Defense Team in Albany Sex Crime Case

On Cuomo Sex-Crime Charge, Expect Defense Complaints about Albany Police

National Review's Andrew McCarthy, a former assistant U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, analyzes how Andrew M. Cuomo's defense team will approach the criminal misdemeanor charges for "forcible touching" in Albany County. The following excerpt gives a short synopsis of a longer bit of analysis for what Cuomo's defense is likely to focus upon in attempting to avoid the criminal conviction of their client:

As our Isaac Schorr reports, New York’s disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo has apparently been charged with a sex crime — forcible touching — which is a misdemeanor under state law. As yet, no criminal complaint has been filed publicly, and because of the nature of the case, it may be that the version eventually released by the court will be redacted. It is obvious, though, that the charge is based on a report to Albany police by Brittany Commisso, a state executive chamber staffer.

After initial reluctance, Ms. Commisso came forward to investigators and went public with the allegation that the then-governor groped one of her breasts, without consent, at the governor’s mansion. She was referred to only as “Executive Assistant #1” in state attorney general Letitia James’s explosive sexual-harassment report, which ultimately doomed Cuomo, forcing his resignation.

Back in early August, I wrote about the wayward press conference given on a Saturday morning by the Albany County Sheriff’s Office about Ms. Commisso’s report. To be clear, Cuomo may be as guilty as the day is long in the court of public opinion — I’m inclined to believe that he is. In the court of law, however, he is presumed innocent. Although it is prosecuting him, the state’s job also entails protecting his fair-trial rights. He may well be convicted, particularly if Ms. Commisso is a compelling witness. But if Cuomo decides to fight the case, the police commentary will give him some cards to play in arguing that he has been denied a fair proceeding....

We’ll see what happens. But if Cuomo decides to fight rather than plead guilty, expect to hear a lot — at least in the pretrial phase — about Sheriff Apple’s press conference.

We omitted a longer bit of older analysis McCarthy provided back in August 2021, but do click through for that detail if you're interested. We think the legal methods Cuomo's defense team will utilize in the sexual harassment cases will be similar to those they would use in any criminal cases that arise in connection to Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals.

29 October 2021: Opinion - Cuomo Should Also Face Criminal Charges for COVID Nursing Home Deaths Scandals

Janice Dean: Cuomo sex crime charge is hopefully the beginning of holding disgraced 'Luv Guv' accountable

In this opinion piece, Janice Dean shares her thoughts on where criminal investigations of Andrew M. Cuomo should go next now that sex crime charges have been filed. Here are several excerpts:

It hit me when I saw the official document from the Albany County Sheriff’s Office this afternoon: "The People of The State of New York Vs. Andrew M. Cuomo."

The same former governor who this time last year was polishing his Emmy award and celebrating his New York Times best-selling book was charged Thursday with groping a former aide at the Executive Mansion. The self-proclaimed "Luv Guv" who appeared regularly on his brother Chris's primetime show on CNN to talk about who's their mother’s favorite son could now have to register as a sex offender if he’s convicted....

Although there is definitely some satisfaction in knowing this man could actually be arrested for a crime after being talked about as a possible presidential candidate last year, it is still not enough for those of us who have been asking for answers and accountability for arguably an even bigger crime: Helping to kill thousands of seniors in nursing homes in the spring 2020....

The charges Thursday allege that the disgraced governor’s filthy hands were all over a young woman’s body without her permission. And for those of us that lost loved ones in nursing homes, he has blood on those hands as well.

Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals are much bigger in scale than the sexual harassment charges for which Cuomo faces prosecution as a misdemeanor. They involved the active participation of many people in New York's state government, many of whom are members of Cuomo's Democratic party, which holds political power in the state. The sexual harassment allegations provided these party members a way to remove Cuomo from office while limiting the fallout to themselves.

That doesn't change their need to hold Cuomo accountable for his administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive, which led to hundreds, if not thousands, of excess COVID deaths among New York nursing home residents. Dean is absolutely right in pushing for that accountability. Given what we've seen since replacement NY Governor Kathy Hochul was sworn into office, that will continue to be an uphill struggle, because it is in her and her party's interest to avoid true accountability to protect their hold on their political power.

28 October 2021: Cuomo Charged with "Forcible Touching" in Criminal Misdemeanor

Cuomo accused of forcible touching in criminal complaint

This report is from the Associated Press, but was covered in the Albany Times-Union, which presumably has good contacts within the Albany County prosecutor's and sheriff's offices:

A criminal complaint filed by a police investigator with a court in Albany has accused former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo of committing a misdemeanor sex crime, though there was confusion Thursday over whether the document was made public by mistake.

The one-page complaint, filed by an investigator with the Albany County Sheriff's Office, accused Cuomo of putting his hand under a woman's shirt on Dec. 7, 2020. The document didn't name the woman but Cuomo had been publicly accused of groping an aide, Brittany Commisso, at the executive mansion in Albany last year around that date.

The office of the county's district attorney, David Soares, which would handle any prosecution and was involved in the investigation, issued a statement saying it had been caught off guard by the filing.

"Like the rest of the public, we were surprised to learn today that a criminal complaint was filed in Albany City Court by the Albany County Sheriff’s Office against Andrew Cuomo,” it said. “The Office of Court Administration has since made that filing public. Our office will not be commenting further on this case.”

The Times Union, of Albany, quoted unnamed officials as saying the complaint had been issued “prematurely" before a final decision had been made about whether Cuomo would face charges.

The office of Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple didn't directly address that report, but confirmed in a statement that a criminal summons had been issued by Albany City Court ordering Cuomo to appear there at 2:30 p.m. on Nov. 17....

The crime of forcible touching is punishable in New York by up to year in jail and up to three years probation, with discretion for the court to impose lesser penalties including no jail time....

The complaint filed by the sheriff's department investigator said evidence in the case included police BlackBerry messages, cell phone records, building security records and a text message from Cuomo's mobile phone. The complaint was signed by the officer Monday and stamped by the court as received Thursday.

The report also captures the reaction of NY State Attorney General Letitia James:

James, whose office is not involved in the criminal investigation of Cuomo, issued a statement saying her civil probe had been conducted “without fear or favor.”

“The criminal charges brought today against Mr. Cuomo for forcible touching further validate the findings in our report,” she said.

James is said to be close to announcing that she will run for governor, multiple people with knowledge of her plans have told The Associated Press.

And here we thought it was going to be a relatively slow news day....

28 October 2021: Taxpayers Paying to Remove Cuomo's Name from Public Signs

'We should start preparing': Inside the race to strip Andrew Cuomo's name from NY signs

This is almost the bottom story of the day:

The now-former governor's Aug. 10 announcement that he would step down two weeks later didn't just set into motion a two-week transition that saw Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul rapidly prepare for taking over the state's highest executive office.

It also launched a scramble to secure new signs, stickers and magnets to literally erase the name of New York's 56th governor and replace it with the 57th, marking the first time a woman's name would adorn state property.

Through a Freedom of Information Law request, the USA TODAY Network New York obtained emails, invoices and design documents that shed light on the Office of State Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation's dash to scrub Cuomo's name from signage in time for Hochul's Aug. 24 inauguration.

To be sure, having the governor's name on signs throughout the state is an abuse of power, constituting free advertising at taxpayer expense. If New York's legislators were smarter and more fiscally responsible, they would bar the names of elected officials from appearing on public signs.

The only reason this story doesn't qualify as the bottom story of the day is because there's a new story involving CNN's ethically-troubled Primetime host, Chris Cuomo. For that story, follow this link.

28 October 2021: Tish James to Announce Run for NY Governor

AP Sources: Letitia James will run for New York governor

This report indicates Letitia "Tish" James may soon announce her candidacy to run for NY Governor in 2022.

New York Attorney General Letitia James plans to run for governor, according to three people directly familiar with her plans who spoke to The Associated Press on Wednesday.

James will enter the race as a formidable candidate for the Democratic nomination just months after issuing a damning report that drove Andrew Cuomo from office in a sexual harassment scandal.

The three people familiar with her plans were not authorized to speak publicly. James is expected to make an announcement later this week, according to one of the people.

Kimberly Peeler-Allen, a James campaign adviser said in a statement: “Attorney General Letitia James has made a decision regarding the governor’s race. She will be announcing it in the coming days.”

James, 63, is the first woman elected as New York’s attorney general and the first Black person to serve in the role. With a power base in New York City, she is poised to be a top threat to Gov. Kathy Hochul, who had been Cuomo’s lieutenant governor.

The timeline wonders if James' pending gubernatorial candidacy would be a thing if replacement NY Governor Hochul had prioritized addressing Andrew M. Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals. Hochul's leadership failure on that count has certainly given James an opening, though one Hochul could easily address if she wanted.

28 October 2021: Opinion - Cuomo Lackey Malatras Needs to Go

To truly clean up Albany, Kathy Hochul needs to boot SUNY Chancellor James Malatras

This opinion piece by Fred Smith lays out the case that James Malatras needs to be shown the door. The following excerpt picks up from replacement NY Governor Kathy Hochul's pledge to fire everyone named in the state attorney general's 3 August 2021 report, which along with the threat of removal from office by impeachment, prompted Andrew M. Cuomo to resign in disgrace.

She pointedly pledged to purge her dominion of the shady types who thrived under Cuomo’s odious regime, especially those cited in Attorney General Tish James’ investigation of alleged sexual harassment. She’s done some of that in her first 45 days.

Malatras, who wasn’t mentioned in the report, so far hasn’t been included in the to-be-purged group but should be — even if it means Hochul must demand Cuomo’s carryover trustees un-appoint him.

There are several reasons for this: Most important, Malatras abetted the coverup of COVID-19 nursing-home deaths on Cuomo’s watch. His spin is that he never changed the stats but merely helped edit the undercount.

Then he supposedly “volunteered” his own time to advance Cuomo’s self-glorifying $5 million book on leadership during the COVID crisis.

Finally, in March, a few days after the AG’s report was released, he wrote a letter to SUNY’s college presidents expressing outrage at the “repugnant” acts detailed in it: “I have worked with the Governor at certain points for many years. It was always a difficult and demanding environment to work in,” he claimed.

He assured them that he “had no knowledge of the actions corroborated in the Attorney General’s report, conduct that far exceeded anything I could even fathom during my time in the Governor’s Office.”

The chancellor doth protest too much: After all, for a guy so close to Cuomo for so long and who’s been so intimately aware of his management style and habits, his sudden “Shock, shock!” fails the nose test.

We think Smith mididentifies the timing of Malatras' reaction to the attorney general's 3 August 2021 report. His comments were originally reported in the New York Post on 10 August 2021, which quotes them from a letter Malatras delivered to State University of New York leadership on Monday, 9 August 2021.

27 October 2021: Cuomo's Latest Big Lie

Churchill: Cuomo has his own version of the Big Lie

Albany Times-Union columnist devastates a claim made by Andrew M. Cuomo's personal attorney on

During a press conference last week, Andrew Cuomo attorney Rita Glavin made a startling claim. Actually, she made a quite a few startling claims, but for now let's focus on just one.

"The report," Glavin said, referring to the sexual harassment investigation overseen by Attorney General Letitia James, "prejudiced the governor, overturned the election and disenfranchised 3.6 million votes."

Overturned the election? Disenfranchised voters? Goodness.

Readers, I hope you know that I'm a big fan of democracy and will do what I can to defend it. So when I heard about this apparent coup, I immediately went to work investigating the supposed malfeasance.

And after about ... checks watch ... three minutes of grueling research, I dug up a detail Glavin seems to have forgotten: Cuomo resigned.

There was no ouster or coup. No election was overturned. If voters were disenfranchised, it was the governor who did the disenfranchising when he, you know, QUIT HIS JOB.

Here's previous coverage of the claims on the timeline:

• 7 August 2021: Cuomo Claims Through Lawyer He Was "Ambushed" by NY Atty General
• 10 August 2021: Cuomo Attorney Holds Press Briefing to Challenge NY AG's Cuomo Sexual Harassment Findings
• 10 August 2021: Andrew M. Cuomo Announces Resignation
• 21 August 2021: Cuomo Attorney Demands NY Atty General Report Be Changed to Benefit Cuomo
• 22 August 2021: Cuomo Makes Odd Claims About Criminal Justice System
• 24 August 2021: Ding Dong, Cuomo's Gone!
• 17 September 2021: Did Cuomo Exploit State Government Resources for Defense Lawyer's Press Briefings?
• 8 October 2021: Cuomo Tries to Influence NY Assembly Impeachment Probe Report
• 9 October 2021: Parsing Cuomo's Personal Attorney's Legal Claims
• 12 October 2021: Cuomo's Defense Strategy for COVID Nursing Home Deaths Scandals
• 20 October 2021: Cuomo Attorney Asks to Have Damning Sexual Harassment Findings in AG Report Rewritten
• 20 October 2021: Cuomo’s Ongoing War on Tish James

Fact check: TRUE. The timeline confirms Andrew M. Cuomo is a quitter.

26 October 2021: No Progress for NY Assembly Impeachment Probe Report

After 8 months, still no final report from Assembly impeachment probe

This report indicates there's no visible sign of progress for the NY Assembly's report on its impeachment probe of Andrew M. Cuomo.

When Cuomo resigned in August, the Assembly halted an impeachment proceeding but, after public pressure, promised to release its finding from the investigation that stretched out over eight months.

But members of the Judiciary Committee still have not even seen a draft of that final report. And they haven’t met since August 9.

“It’s pretty clear it’s a complicated case, but they are the ones who’ve been setting the deadlines, not us,” said Blair Horner, the executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group. “I think everyone in New York has a right to know what’s going on with it. And they should get the report out as soon as they can.”

In September, several members of the Assembly's Judiciary Committee indicated the report would be released in early October 220

Here is related coverage from the timeline:

• 16 August 2021: NY Assembly to Produce Report on Its Cuomo Impeachment Probe
• 4 October 2021: NY Assy Cuomo Report in "a Couple of Weeks, Maybe a Month or Two"

At this point, havving the report in "a couple of weeks" or "a month" is now out of the question. What happens if November passes and there's still no report?

26 October 2021: Hochul's Health Department Still Covering Up COVID Nursing Home Deaths

Hochul’s Health Dept. continues Cuomo-era stall in in releasing nursing-home COVID info

This report indicates replacement NY Governor Kathy Hochul isn't taking Andrew M. Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandal seriously enough to address one of its major components: the Cuomo administration's acknowledged cover-up.

Despite Gov. Kathy Hochul’s promises of transparency, the state Health Department continues responding to requests for pandemic data with stalling tactics that became notorious during the Cuomo administration.

In one striking example, the department recently responded to the Empire Center’s request for updated nursing-home fatality data with the same form letter — and the same invalid excuse for delay — that it used last year as part of what came to be recognized as a coverup.

In its letter of Sept. 22, 2021, the department said it couldn’t produce the data until Nov. 29 — five months after the original request — “because a diligent search for responsive records is still being conducted.”

That’s exactly the same boilerplate explanation that it gave for withholding nursing-home data from the Empire Center in August 2020, and the claim was specious in both cases.

In reality, the requested records were readily findable in the department’s Health Emergency Response Data System, or HERDS, which has been collecting daily reports from nursing homes since early in the pandemic.

This is a major black eye for replacement NY Governor Kathy Hochul. It screams she has made no progress in addressing the New York Health Department's role in the Cuomo administration's cover-up of the excess deaths that resulted from its deadly 25 March 2020 directive that forced nursing homes to blindly admit COVID patients being dumped out of New York hospitals to free up their bed space.

Her choice to place her primary focus on addressing Cuomo's sexual harassment scandals at the expense of the COVID nursing home deaths scandals is consistent with the hypothesis that the sexual harassment allegations were promoted as a way to minimize the damage to the state's Democratic Party from the much larger COVID nursing home deaths scandals. In that light, it was a political path of expediency for removing Cuomo from office.

26 October 2021: Hochul Targets Toxic Work Environment Cuomo Left Behind in NY State Government

Hochul announces new anti-harassment guidelines

Replacement NY Governor Kathy Hochul has taken a larger step to address the toxic work environment Andrew M. Cuomo promoted throughout New York's state government.

Gov. Kathy Hochul is implementing new guidelines designed to curtail workplace discrimination and harassment in state government, including within the Executive Chamber.

The changes, laid out in a news release Monday, include hiring an independent firm to investigate complaints and the creation of a new human resources department....

The move comes after a year of sexual harassment scandals targeting the Executive Chamber. In August, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo resigned following the attorney general’s report that concluded he committed acts of sexual misconduct, including workplace harassment, against 11 women.

If only Hochul showed the same level of dedication to rooting out Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals.

In another note, the report errs in indicating the move came "after a year of sexual harassment scandals targing the Executive Chamber". In reality, the first sexual harassment allegations involving misconduct by Andrew M. Cuomo and members of his administration were made on 14 December 2020 via Lindsey Boylan's Twitter post, which she detailed on 24 February 2021, which marks the timeline's first coverage of the story. It's a minor point, but we're not yet at the one year anniversary of that event.

25 October 2021: Michigan State Auditor Estimates Over 800 Additional COVID in Audit Than Previously Reported

Preliminary audit results find 800 unreported COVID-19 deaths

This report was published on 22 October 2021. Michigan's state auditor general Doug Ringler has issued preliminary findings from his ongoing audit of Michigan's COVID records.

Preliminary results from Auditor Doug Ringler's analysis of Michigan’s long-term care facility COVID-19 death data found about 800 additional confirmed and probable COVID-19 deaths than the state initially counted overall statewide between Jan. 1, 2020, and July 3, 2021.

Ringler responded to a request from the Oversight Committee to investigate the accuracy of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services’ (MDHHS) COVID-19 death data in long-term care facilities. The request followed questions about the accuracy of MDHHS COVID-19 death data.

Ringler told Johnson he used death certificate information from the Electronic Death Record System and COVID-19 case and death data from the Michigan Disease Surveillance System (MDSS). The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services counts total COVID-19 deaths on their pandemic website using data from MDSS.

Ringler will use the analysis results of overall COVID-19 deaths and other state databases to determine the actual number of long-term care facility deaths due to COVID-19.

Ringler's audit is projected to be finished in late November or early December 2021.

At this writing, Michigan reports 23,366 total COVID deaths, of which 21,918 are confirmed and 1,448 are classified as probable. The state reports 5,825 COVID deaths among residents of nursing homes and other long term care facilities, which is just shy of 25% of the official total.

Ringler's audit has initially identified an additional 822 deaths, which would increase the official total by 3.5%. The preliminary audit results do not indicate what percent of the additional COVID deaths might be made up of Michigan nursing home residents.

Michigan is one three other states (along with New Jersey and Pennsylvania) that implemented and sustained policies similar to those of Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive in New York, which forced nursing homes to admit COVID patients being discharged from hospitals to free up hospital bed space. A fifth state, California, also implemented a similar policy but did not sustain it, revoking it within a few days of it being implemented.

In New York, the Cuomo administration sought to cover-up the full extent of COVID deaths it knew existed among nursing home residents, which ultimately led to large upward revisions in those COVID death figures when its undercount was exposed. Michigan's situation differs because state officials never compiled the same level of data to assemble its official count, which is what prompted Ringler's audit.

25 October 2021: Opinion - Due Process Is Different When Cuomo Does It

Seiler: All the due process Cuomo could have stomached

Albany Times-Union editor Casey Seiler runs through a number of examples of hypocrisy on the part of Andrew M. Cuomo's claim the state attorney general's investigation of his alleged misconduct in office was biased. He recaps a number of events already covered somewhere in the timeline, before describing one that has not. Here's that excerpt, which picks up from the recent JCOPE vote fiasco:

In most democratic bodies, a measure that receives a 7-2 vote would be approved. But because JCOPE was designed to be ineffective, the matter required eight aye votes, and several commissioners neglected to show up — while others, incredibly, showed up but kited out early. While it's unclear how the five missing members might have voted, it's sort of what they're on JCOPE to do.

One of those who couldn't make it all the way through was Colleen DiPirro, a Cuomo appointee whose aversion — at least in public — to voting in any way that might displease the former governor is at least as powerful as her affection for scrolling through her cellphone in remote meetings. After Tuesday's vote, one commissioner plaintively asked how DiPirro had voted, only to be informed she had taken a powder.

DiPirro, it's worth remembering, had dinner with then-Inspector General Letizia Tagliafierro the night before the notorious January 2019 JCOPE meeting that included a vote on whether or not the panel should investigate whether former Cuomo aide Joe Percoco was running the governor's 2014 re-election campaign out of Cuomo’s taxpayer-funded Manhattan office. DiPirro and Tagliafierro, you see, are old friends. And according to them, when old friends get together the night before a vote that could prove problematic for their mutual patron, they definitely don't discuss it.

When information about the closed-door proceeding was somehow leaked the very next day to Cuomo, who harangued Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie about the way his appointees had voted, it ended up being investigated — in secret — by Tagliafierro's office. Though the former Cuomo aide recused herself, her investigators failed to talk to Cuomo or Heastie.

Tagliafierro resigned last month as this newspaper was preparing an investigative piece that detailed how the inspector general's office had withered during Cuomo's administration. On Thursday, Gov. Kathy Hochul took the refreshing step of appointing an inspector general who doesn't come from the ranks of the Executive Chamber: former Manhattan prosecutor Lucy Lang.

It's rather amazing how incestous New York's state government became during Andrew M. Cuomo's tenure as governor.

Here is previous coverage of related events on the timeline:

• 2 July 2021: JCOPE Vote Abstainers Block New Criminal Probe of Governor Cuomo
• 9 July 2021: JCOPE Ethics Leak Probe Won't Be Reopened
• 26 July 2021: Editorial - Tips for JCOPE on How to Conduct a Real Investigation
• 17 August 2021: Assembly Asked to Review Case JCOPE Dropped
• 26 August 2021: JCOPE Finally Asks for Criminal Probe of Leak to Cuomo
• 14 September 2021: NY Atty General Slams JCOPE Investigation of Leak as Travesty, But Won't Probe Leak (For Now)
• 15 September 2021: JCOPE Votes Again to Request NY Atty General Probe Leak to Cuomo
• 18 September 2021: Former Cuomo Aide Who Became State Inspector General Resigns

Seiler's op-ed was published on 23 October 2021.

24 October 2021: Probes Into Cuomo Priority Friends and Family COVID Testing Scandal Are Stalling

Lawmakers benefited from priority COVID-19 tests

Brendan Lyons of the Albany Times-Union has continued digging into what we've called the "Looking Out for Número Cuomo" scandal, in which the friends and family members of those politically connected to Andrew M. Cuomo received priority COVID testing when test kits for confirming coronavirus infections were in very short supply.

The report leads with bad news for how seriously investigators are taking their tasks in investigating the misconduct:

Multiple investigations into preferential COVID-19 testing that former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's administration had provided for the well-connected — including state lawmakers and their families — have stalled, and individuals with intimate knowledge of the practice said they were never interviewed in connection with any of the inquiries.

Lyons however digs into how the preferential treatment operation was conducted, which screams the participants knew it wasn't on the up-and-up. The "chamber" referenced in the following excerpt refers to the Executive Chamber of the Governor Andrew M. Cuomo's office:

Recent interviews with nurses and health department officials who worked at major COVID-19 testing sites downstate last year, including at Glen Island Park in New Rochelle and Jones Beach State Park on Long Island, have revealed new details of the practice, including the use of code words when Department of Health officials relayed VIP test results to members of the governor's Executive Chamber.

The department developed the system because officials concluded that by law only physicians or medical practitioners could inform someone if their test results were positive. But if they were negative, administrators and others were directed to reveal results to Cuomo's staffers using carefully worded code language.

"The chamber controlled the priority list," said a health department official involved with the VIP testing, who spoke on the condition of not being identified. "If somebody from chamber called ... and says, 'I want the test results for Abraham Lincoln,' you could say, ‘Nothing to worry about,' and the chamber official would understand that meant the result was negative for COVID-19."

But health officials said the chamber's involvement in facilitating the delivery of test results for VIPs and others may have violated medical privacy laws. Even Cuomo, they said, at times would be informed of and announce someone's test result before the person may have been notified. Sources with knowledge of the matter said Cuomo also would personally inform his relatives, including his brother, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, of their results.

And then, there's a short snippet of how the Cuomo-test rationing scandal was exposed:

The former administration's control and knowledge of the VIP testing program became more evident when a law enforcement official at a downstate testing site had classified his test as "priority" because he was going on vacation out of state and needed a negative test result to travel.

The official "tried to hijack the system and made himself a priority," the health department employee said. "But he didn’t understand all this stuff that happened in background, so when this priority test came through and it didn’t match the approved list of priority tests, because we had to get permission from chamber, the whole thing kind of blew up."

The governor's office's actions trip over Section 74 of New York's Public Officers Law, which prohibits government officials from using or attempting to use "his or her official position to secure unwarranted privileges or exemptions for himself or herself or others". The same law applies in Andrew M. Cuomo's pandemic "leadership" book deal scandal, from which Cuomo personally profited to the tune of $5.12 million.

The report suggests a significant number of influential state officials, including legislators and New York's chief judge, benefited from Cuomo's friends and family priority COVID testing operation. It remains to be seen whether the probes into this particular scandal are stalling to protect them.

Here's previous coverage from the timeline:

• 25 March 2021: Looking Out for Número Cuomo
• 26 March 2201: Did NY Governor Break Law Looking Out for Número Cuomo?
• 26 March 2021: CNN Shreds Remnants of Its Credibility
• 28 March 2021: The Scandal of Nobody to Investigate Cuomo Testing Scandal
• 30 March 2021: CNN's Chris Cuomo Received Extra Special Care from NY DOH Doctor
• 15 May 2021: NY Attorney General Issuing Subpoenas in Cuomo Probes
• 18 May 2021: "Looking Out for Número Cuomo" COVID Test Doctor Resigns State Government Job
• 21 May 2021: Federal Investigation Expands into "Looking Out for Numero Cuomo" VIP Testing Scandal
• 21 May 2021: Cuomo VIP Priority Testing Continued Into April 2021
• 2 July 2021: New York's Chief Judge Ensnared in VIP COVID Testing for Cuomo Friends and Family Scandal

23 October 2021: State Trooper Heading Governor's Protective Detail Replaced

State Police shake up governor's security detail in wake of Cuomo

This report was published on 22 October 2021.

The State Police this week shook up the leadership of a special unit that's assigned to protect the governor's office but had been pulled into the controversies that engulfed former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who was found to have directed the appointment of a young female trooper to the unit who later became a victim of his alleged sexual harassment.

State Police declined earlier this week to provide an update on any leadership or structural changes within the Protective Services Unit, but on Thursday they issued an internal teletype bulletin to members saying that Maj. Douglas Larkin, who oversees the agency's New York City troop, would take over the embattled unit.

“Superintendent Bruen directed a thorough internal review of all aspects of the PSU, which resulted in recommendations to professionalize the unit, including changes to leadership and procedures," said Beau Duffy, a State Police spokesman.

Dave Dively, a technical lieutenant who had been overseeing the detail for 11 months, is being transferred to a position at the New York State Intelligence Center and will be tasked with monitoring issues related to the governor, sources briefed on the matter said. Dively, who had been on the governor's detail for about 11 years, is a "technical" lieutenant because he did not take the competitive exams required for promotion to the position. State Police sources said Cuomo's office had occasionally requested promotions for State Police members who then took command positions in the unit.

If it's not clear from the excerpt above, Dave Dively is the state trooper who is being replaced by Douglas Larkin. Dively was implicated in the state attorney general's report findings of Andrew M. Cuomo's sexual harassment of a female state trooper who Cuomo pulled strings to have assigned to his protective detail.

That he was involved in the misconduct is affirmed by spokesman Beau Duffy's comment regarding "changes to leadership and procedures". In this case, that means ending the practices in which Andrew M. Cuomo engaged as he surrounded himself by loyalists who would look the other way at the incidents involving managerial and sexual-harassment-related misconduct that ultimately forced Cuomo to resign in disgrace to avoid impeachment.

22 October 2021: Editorial - JCOPE Should Either Get Act Together or Die

JCOPE, get your act together and claw back Cuomo’s book profits

The Advance Media NY Editorial Board would really like the competence-challenged Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) to either get its act together or die.

Would somebody please put the Joint Commission on Public Ethics out of its misery, and ours?

New York’s ethics watchdog again showed its toothlessness this week. JCOPE voted 7-2 — one vote short of the necessary eight votes — on a motion to rescind approval of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s $5 million payday from his pandemic memoir, “American Crisis: Lessons in Leadership from the Covid-19 Pandemic.”

The ethics board must approve outside income earned by state employees, including the governor. However, JCOPE members never voted to approve Cuomo’s book deal. The ex-governor got permission on the say-so of one person: JCOPE general counsel Martin Levine....

The Times-Union of Albany reported that a “strong majority” of the commissioners favored revoking the book deal. But by the time the commission voted, after a long, behind-closed-door meeting, five commissioners had peeled off and the votes were no longer there. That’s happened several times.

Enough with the games and the endless discussions. JCOPE must rectify its mistake in approving Cuomo’s windfall and take the necessary steps to claw back the money. Lavine told the Times-Union he planned to bring up the motion again, and he should.

How many bites at the corrupt apple will it take to claw back the millions Cuomo collected on the backs of all the state government employees who worked on producing his book using state government resources?

22 October 2021: Opinion - Case Against Cuomo Weakens

The case against Cuomo weakens

New York Daily News columnist and former federal prosecutor Jim Zirin looks to have written this piece from talking points provided by Andrew M. Cuomo's legal team, who want to control the upcoming release of the New York Assembly's report on the findings of its impeachment probe of the resigned-in-disgrace Cuomo. Here's a sample:

Cuomo was the target of a smear campaign authored by two supposedly independent lawyers working for James. The report concluded that Cuomo “sexually harassed 11 women.” But sexual harassment is defined in state law as workplace discrimination for employees subjecting “an individual to inferior terms, conditions or privileges of employment.” “Petty slights or trivial inconveniences” don’t count. Yet of those “victims” named in the Joon Kim-Anne Clark report, two not work for the State of New York at the time of the alleged misconduct, and the four others, even if their allegations are true, only experienced minor forms of harassment too trivial to make out a violation....

In denouncing Cuomo, James appears tainted with the appearance of bias and impropriety. Cuomo’s March 1, 2021 referral letter to her under Executive Law § 63(8) requested that she “select an independent law firm to conduct an inquiry” into “sexual harassment claims against the governor.” Some independent investigation! Cuomo contends that James herself admitted to interviewing witnesses, and made findings of credibility.

Meantime, in this “he-said, she-said” tale, Cuomo claims that the testimony of two key witnesses has “evolved” over time, meaning that their testimony is riddled with inconsistencies. According to Brittany Commisso, Cuomo rubbed her butt for five seconds, and more seriously pushed her up against the wall in his Governor’s Mansion office, groped her breast and then kissed her. But the woman never mentioned to her colleagues the hand on the butt incident during the course of four conversations with them about his allegedly inappropriate behavior. As for the grope, the story is materially inconsistent with what she told James’ investigators in her initial interview, and what she later told the Albany Times Union in an interview published April 7.

Another complainant, Lindsey Boylan, relied on heavily in the James report, purportedly told then-counsel to the governor Alphonso David in January 2018 “that she had not been subject to sex discrimination, harassment or retaliation” But in December 2020 she alleged that Cuomo had “sexually harassed me for years.”

If all this sounds familiar to the claims made by Cuomo's personal attorney on 20 October 2021, that's because Zirin's column isn't much more than a regurgitation of the claims she advanced via Andrew M. Cuomo's political campaign web site. Zirin adds no meaningful original analysis of his own.

On a side note, Zirin also chose to bring up the example of Eliot Spitzer, who was New York's governor when Andrew M. Cuomo was the state's attorney general, who was similarly "hounded" out of office because of his own sex scandal. This Politico article from 8 August 2021 compares and contrasts how Andrew M. Cuomo conducted an investigation of Spitzer with how James investigated Cuomo, which weakens Cuomo's legal team's case:

James’ modus operandi to some appeared to be an outsized effort to avoid charges of political bias — and offers a striking comparison to how Cuomo investigated the state executive himself when he was New York’s attorney general, most notably his 2007 probe into Spitzer’s use of state police for political purposes. Spitzer resigned as governor the following year amid a prostitution scandal.

That investigation, which concluded Spitzer’s administration had created and then spread negative information to media about Republican Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno’s use of state travel resources, was not launched at the governor’s referral under Executive Law 63(8), which was how James was tasked with her probe in March. Invoking the law meant Cuomo placed responsibility for James and the lawyers she chose to conduct the investigation independent of his office.

Cuomo, publicly at least, made the decision himself to investigate Spitzer, after Bruno — who could not directly order a probe — had requested it. And Cuomo did it through internal lawyers who reported to him, including then-special counsel Linda Lacewell, who is currently the head of the state’s Department of Financial Services. Lacewell, now a longtime Cuomo ally, was named several times in James’ report as part of the effort to discredit harassment allegations.

James, in contrast, appointed two well-known outside attorneys to lead her probe. Cuomo’s aides and lawyers say those picks are biased, pointing to Kim’s close relationship to former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who investigated the Cuomo administration's shutdown of a commission charged with looking into corruption in state government, as well as his role in the prosecution of former top Cuomo aide Joe Percoco.

Those arguments are “unpersuasive,” said Jennifer Rodgers, a former federal prosecutor in New York and Columbia Law lecturer.

“If a lawyer were automatically inappropriately biased because they had previously worked on a matter that involved that subject, no prosecutors could ever investigate the same person twice,” she said in an interview Saturday.

Cuomo's legal team are trying hard to distract attention from their client's credibility gap as they face multiple civil and criminal litigations. It's now a long-running joke here at the timeline, but it's still true: Cuomo desperately needs better PR people and more legal help.

As a former prosecutor and now columnist, Zirin can be considered to count as both a PR person and as legal help advancing in Cuomo's personal and political interests. See what we mean?

21 October 2021: Hochul Announces New Inspector General, Other Appointments

Hochul appoints Inspector General, other prominent posts

Replacement NY Governor Kathy Hochul has announced she is appointing a new Inspector General, following the September 2021 resignation of Cuomo appointee Letizia Tagliafierro, who was under an ethical cloud. Here's an excerpt introducing Lucy Lang:

Gov. Kathy Hochul made several key appointments on Thursday, including naming a new state Inspector General, Lucy Lang.

Lang, who ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary for Manhattan District Attorney earlier this year, formerly worked as a prosecutor in the Manhattan District's office for a dozen years. A June profile in the New York Times described her as having a reputation within that office for "pushing reforms that created new opportunities for those charged by prosecutors" while being "stymied by a leadership team that did not always want things to change as fast as she did."

During the decade-long tenure of Hochul's predecessor, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, all three inspector generals were drawn from the ranks of Cuomo's staff when he was state attorney general. The office was criticized for lacking of independence from Cuomo, particularly in its lackluster investigation of a 2019 state ethics commission leak to the governor.

Hochul also announced several other appointments:

• Jeanette M. Moy as Commissioner of the Office of General Services
• Maria Imperial as Commissioner of the Division of Human Rights
• Jackie Bray as Commissioner of the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services
• Gaurav Vasisht as Executive Director of the Commissioners of the New York State Insurance Fund

Hochul has a very mixed track record with her appointments to date, with her appointees to the Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) representing her biggest failures to date in satisfactorily addressing Andrew M. Cuomo's multiple scandals.

20 October 2021: Cuomo’s Ongoing War on Tish James

Cuomo’s War on Tish James Continues

The New York Magazine describes Andrew M. Cuomo's long-running attempts to smear New York State Attorney General Letitia James, until very recently, a one-sided feud that we think may have begun with the realization she wasn't one of his JCOPE commission appointees several months before her office released its multiple findings on Cuomo's alleged sexual harassment incidents.

In any case, this report picks up on the response of the attorney general's office, which we've selected as our excerpt:

A spokesman from the Attorney General’s office responded to Glavin’s claims in a statement: “Another day, another baseless attack by the former governor who resigned so he didn’t have to participate in an impeachment hearing. The most concerning part of today’s charade was the former governor’s attempt to stifle a legal criminal investigation into allegations that he used state resources for a book deal and personal profit. This is not the Moreland Commission, and we will not be bullied into shutting down this investigation like the former governor did with that commission.”

That's the entire official statement.

20 October 2021: Cuomo Attorney Asks to Have Damning Sexual Harassment Findings in AG Report Rewritten

Cuomo attorney: AG James biased on sexual harassment report due to political ambition

Andrew M. Cuomo's personal attorney, Rita Glavin, is seeking to have the findings of the state attorney general's report into Andrew M. Cuomo's alleged sexual harassment of 11 women rewritten.

Former governor Andrew Cuomo’s legal team announced Wednesday the submission of an application to alter Attorney General Letitia James’ sexual harassment report about him.

Rita Glavin, the attorney for the former governor, says James viewed the allegations through a bias lens due to her own political ambitions, including the potential of her being a Democratic primary opponent against Cuomo in 2022’s gubernatorial election.

Cuomo resigned in August following the attorney general’s bombshell report that concluded he sexually harassed numerous women, including former and current state employees.

Hmm. You would think a politician holding greater political power than the state attorney general in New York, like say, the governorship, would have declined to resign in disgrace if they were facing off against another politician. Especially after having had months to prepare for an adverse finding.

But here's what Glavin is claiming on her client's behalf:

“Today we are submitting to attorneys, an application to correct, amend and supplement the August 3rd accusation of sexual abuse against the governor,” Glavin said. “First of all, the application must be considered by a truly independent reviewer. It is our position that the attorney general cannot consider the application because she is not to be involved into allegations against the governor.

“The August 3rd report is materially misleading, it is flawed, and it is unreliable,” Glavin said. “It misled the public, but it also is relied upon in civil lawsuits that defendants have said they plan to file. The report prejudiced the governor, overturned the election, and disenfranchised 3.6 million votes. It has to be corrected.”

According to Glavin, the attorney general’s report contained “glaring material omissions and errors, regarding facts, evidence, and applicable law, as detailed in a 150-page submission with exhibits.

You might think that if Andrew M. Cuomo thought he had a strong argument, he would be lining up to run, again, for the position to which he was elected in New York on three separate occasions.

When asked if Cuomo was considering a run for governor next year, Glavin said: “I don’t have an answer for that.”

We think Glavin's pitch is mainly aimed at minimizing the legal consequences of the sexual harassment allegations against her client, which will include both civil and criminal litigation.

20 October 2021: A Dirtier Picture of Hochul's JCOPE Appointees Emerges

Hochul’s ethics chair protects Cuomo’s $5.1 million deal

The developments at JCOPE's Tuesday, 19 October 2021 meeting appear worse than we had previously indicated. The first part of this report recaps yesterday's action:

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s hand-picked chairman of the embattled Joint Commission on Public Ethics cast the deciding vote Tuesday that blocked action to rescind the agency’s prior approval of disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s controversial $5.1 million COVID-19 book contract.

Eight votes of the 14 member JCOPE are needed to pass a motion or resolution.

But the motion introduced by Commissioner Gary Lavine garnered just seven votes of the nine commissioners present, while just two, including chairman Jose Nieves, voted no.

In another move that raised eyebrows, three other commissioners who were present for the start of the meeting were missing in action on the vote on the Cuomo book deal, some four hours later, after JCOPE emerged from a private session.

The three no-shows also prevented an eighth vote to void JCOPE’s prior approval of Cuomo’s pandemic memoir — thus protecting the disgraced ex-governor’s profit-making venture.

The next excerpt is where it gets worse:

Nieves, Hochul’s appointee, defended his no-vote.

“I voted my conscience. I don’t believe the new members of the commission were provided information to support the motion,” Nieves told The Post Tuesday night.

He said Lavine’s motion was “poorly worded” and claimed revoking the Cuomo book deal approval was unprecedented as there was no other instance in JCOPE’s history where the commissioners overrode such a decision delegated to top staffers.

In other words, Nieves bent over backwards to avoid dealing with the irregularities that allowed the Cuomo book deal to be approved by JCOPE's staff without any review or approval by any of JCOPE's commissioners. That's despite what happened at JCOPE's 5 October 2021 meeting, when the commissioners voted to have the staff investigated for their roles in the matter.

This is the second time a Hochul appointee has pursued similar arguments to justify their looking the other way at ethical misconduct by Andrew M. Cuomo. That kind of willingness may be a qualifying characteristic for Hochul's JCOPE appointees.

19 October 2021: JCOPE Fails to Claw Back Cuomo Book Deal Millions Despite Majority Supporting Action

JCOPE fails to revoke Cuomo book approval

If you've ever thought JCOPE has become a clown show*, you'll find evidence to support your assessment in the following excerpt from this report:

A strong majority of New York ethics commissioners present for a vote on Tuesday favored revoking approval of former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's lucrative book deal. Yet the motion still went down by one vote because so many other commissioners had departed the meeting by the time the vote occurred late Tuesday afternoon.

By a margin of seven votes in favor and two against, commissioners overseeing the Joint Commission on Public Ethics failed to pass the motion undoing its own staff’s approval for Cuomo to write last year's book, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From the COVID-19 Pandemic." Eight votes in favor were needed to pass the motion. And by the time took place — five hours after the meeting had kicked off — five of 14 JCOPE commissioners were not present. The commission had held an unusually long, closed-door executive session, where the motion and other matters were discussed, before taking the vote in public.

The two votes against the motion were from William Fisher — who was appointed to the commission by Cuomo — and Jose Nieves, the panel's new chairman, who was recently appointed by Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Commissioner Gary Lavine agreed to have a vote on the motion after the executive session concluded. It's one of several times this year a matter has been pushed into executive session, and then failed to receive eight votes due to early departures.

The five commissioners not present at the end of Tuesday's meeting were Colleen DiPirro, an appointee of Cuomo; James McCarthy, the Assembly Republican appointee; David McNamara, a Senate Republican appointee; Juanita Bing Newton, the Senate Democratic appointee; and Terryl Brown, who was just appointed to JCOPE on Monday by Hochul.

* "Clown show" may be too mild a description to describe New York's Joint Commission on Public Ethics.

19 October 2021: Opinion - Why NY State Government Needs Accountability

Bringing accountability to New York State government

This opinion piece by the New York Public Interest Research Group's executive director, Blair Horner, gets to root of Albany's ongoing problems with corruption, as exemplified by the Cuomo administration's scandals:

Ever since former Governor Cuomo resigned in the wake of bombshell investigations that found that his Administration had misled the public about nursing home deaths and that he had harassed his staff, the calls for reform have been growing.

Governor Hochul has said that she wishes to completely overhaul the state’s ethics oversight, reportedly saying that she wants “blow up” the state’s ethics watchdog.

Bravo! But the problems of Albany are not solely the result of a failed ethics enforcement system. The problems go much deeper.

For a decade New York State has plowed billions of dollars into programs that were designed to be “transformational” and to recharge economic development. But the decisions were largely made behind closed doors and no systems were put in place to monitor whether those programs succeeded or failed. In fact, when it came to the efforts to revitalize Buffalo and Syracuse, all that resulted was scandal. The then-U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s investigation led to the conviction of top Cuomo aides and allies for widespread “pay-to-play” schemes.

The Legislature never followed up to investigate these failures or to comprehensively review the track record of the Cuomo Administration’s multi-billion-dollar initiatives.

They should and they must. There is still time to learn from those scandals.

That's the introduction. Horner continues to describe how New York can build on the tools and examples it has already established to achieve accountability in state government. Do click through to read the whole thing.

Side note: News related to New York's COVID nursing home deaths scandals is very sparse this week. We anticipate the next major developments will come from either the release of the NY Assembly's impeachment probe's findings or from legal developments from the various criminal investigations, with little new information in between. Until those legal and bureaucratic-driven events arrive, it is likely we will have less-than-daily updates.

18 October 2021: Editorial - Cleaning House

Editorial: Cleaning house

The editors of the Albany Times-Union are happy to see one part of the Cuomo influence network be disbanded:

In 2015, the administration of Gov. Andrew Cuomo started a program they said was intended to promote integrity in government and bolster the public’s trust. Now, Gov. Kathy Hochul hopes to promote integrity and bolster trust by doing away with the same program.

Under the “ethics, risk and compliance initiative,” the executive chamber embedded attorneys in two dozen state agencies. In theory, they were there to protect the state from liability by making sure agencies didn’t trip themselves up on an ethics violation. In practice, they were there to protect Mr. Cuomo.

These special counsels helped Mr. Cuomo suppress information that was potentially harmful to his reputation. The former governor was notorious for wanting to control the narrative — as we saw last year with the manipulation of nursing home COVID data. Loyalists embedded in agencies could help keep scandals out of sight and public records under wraps by flagging potentially troublesome Freedom of Information Law requests, some of which took months — or years — to be answered under the Cuomo administration.

These counsels were the governor’s eyes and ears, a web of watchers that all led back to Mr. Cuomo.

Gov. Hochul is sweeping up that web, in line with her pledge to open up government. It’s encouraging to see her putting the state’s house in order.

Andrew M. Cuomo embedded far more loyalist dead-enders than these throughout New York's state government. There are many who weren't named in the attorney general's report on Cuomo's sexual harassment allegations who remain in the positions to which Cuomo appointed them.

Which is to say there is much more housecleaning to do.

17 October 2021: Opinion - Worse for Cuomo Is Ahead

Worse for Cuomo Is Ahead

It's a very thin weekend for news involving Andrew M. Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals. Fred LeBrun's column fills the void by focusing on what lies ahead for the resigned-in-disgrace governor. Here's an excerpt:

The awakening truth that must be overcoming the former governor at this point is that perhaps for the first time his political future is mostly not in his hands anymore.

Bad news is coming at him from all directions. A federal grand jury in Brooklyn is looking into the state’s already debunked handling of pandemic nursing home deaths, and the dicey $5.1 million book deal associated with it. Attorney General Letitia James has a criminal investigation ongoing over the book as well. Several district attorneys and the Albany County Sheriff’s Office are looking into sexual harassment issues, and an unknown number of civil suits also related to sexual harassment are waiting in the wings.

In addition, very soon the much anticipated Assembly Judiciary Committee report on various alleged Cuomo bad behavior is expected. That committee morphed from the official impeachment inquiry committee. Much of what was charged in James’ Aug. 3 bombshell independent investigation report of sexual harassment claims against the former governor is expected to be affirmed and expanded on by the Judiciary Committee’s report.

Out of all of this, and I probably missed a few inquiries, it is reasonable to assume the lie will be repeatedly put to Cuomo’s denials of having done nothing wrong, nothing illegal. Not that the toxic workplace described in many stories we’ve already all seen along with the many credible chronicles of misbehavior toward women hasn’t already done that....

An imploding Cuomo will play out in real time, I have a hunch, with surprisingly little consequence for anyone but Andrew. At the moment he is a already not much more than a distraction, and it is rather deliciously ironic that former Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul was told by Cuomo she would not be on the ticket for his next run for governor. Now she can tell him that he is not on hers.

Andrew M. Cuomo's political fate was determined when he gave the green light to the deadly 25 March 2020 directive in the first month of the coronavirus pandemic. How it has played out since has been mostly about forcing the truth of the consequences of that event to light, which has been paired against the political motive to limit the damage from that single event to members of Cuomo's party.

15 October 2021: Hochul Wants to 'Blow Up JCOPE'

Hochul wants to 'blow up JCOPE.' But how?

This report indicates replacement NY Governor Kathy Hochul has arrived at an inevitable conclusion, but hasn't yet determined how to proceed to fix a very visible problem:

In a meeting last week with leaders of good-government groups, Gov. Kathy Hochul was said to be particularly blunt concerning one area of government she'd like to reform.

“I want to blow up JCOPE,” Hochul said at the meeting in her New York City office, according to John Kaehny, executive director of Reinvent Albany.

Asked whether Hochul had made the comment about "blowing up" JCOPE, a spokeswoman said only that, "Gov. Hochul is committed to instituting real ethics reforms and restoring trust in government, and we will continue to work with legislators, good government groups, and the public to reform JCOPE and improve ethics oversight to better serve New Yorkers."

In her remarks last week to good-government groups, according to Kaehny, Hochul did not offer specifics about her plan to “blow up” the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, which was created by a 2011 law pushed by her predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo. But as Hochul likely faces a competitive Democratic primary for governor in June 2022, she seems to want to tackle the issue quickly.

Hochul has no way to get rid of JCOPE on her own, and the good-government groups encouraged Hochul and her staff to reach out to leaders in the state Legislature.

Under New York law, Hochul will be forced to take a two-track strategy. Proposals to amend New York's constitution, such as that of State Senator Liz Krueger to create an independent ethics watchdog agency will take at least two years to make happen, so in the short term, she needs band-aid type solutions to make the hopelessly compromised Joint Commission on Public Ethics less bad.

A number of legislative measures aimed at reforming JCOPE short of that more permanent action have been advanced by State Senator Alessandra Biaggi, but were blocked by NY Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie. With Andrew M. Cuomo no longer in power, Heastie represents the biggest barrier to reform.

Cuomo's control and influence over JCOPE's appointed commissioners, including through appointments made by his political ally Carl Heastie, served to place his interests ahead of those of the public. JCOPE became an added level of protection allowing misconduct involving Cuomo administration officials. That misconduce includes episodes such as lying to state legislators about the full extent of COVID nursing home deaths during the period its deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect, which is why the timeline is continuing to follow the topic of JCOPE reform.