1 October 2021: Report - NY Assembly Impeachment Report Will Corroborate Cuomo Sexual Harassment Allegations

A 2nd Cuomo Investigation Is Expected to Confirm Harassment Claims

This report came out on on 30 September 2021. In it, the New York Times' confirms the NY Assembly's impeachment probe will corroborate many of the allegations of sexual harassment committed by Andrew M. Cuomo against multiple women.

For Mr. Cuomo, the outcome of the inquiry could cement the stain of the sexual harassment allegations on his legacy, and lead to additional fallout: The investigation is also scrutinizing whether Mr. Cuomo deliberately obscured the number of nursing home deaths during the pandemic or unlawfully used state resources to write his pandemic memoir, which earned him $5.1 million.

Assemblyman David Weprin, a Democrat from Queens, said the investigation “is going to reach a conclusion similar to some of the findings of the attorney general.”

The Assembly’s lawyers subpoenaed a broad array of documents from Mr. Cuomo and his office in late July, requesting communications related to sexual harassment by Mr. Cuomo, with a particular focus on 13 women, according to a person familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the subpoena publicly.

Meanwhile, the report also indicates that the remnants of Team Cuomo's dead-ender partisan loyalists are turning into full whack-job conspiracy theorists:

Mr. Cuomo on Wednesday suggested that Ms. James be compelled to answer a series of 10 questions that his spokesman, Rich Azzopardi, posted on Twitter; Mr. Cuomo retweeted the list.

“It should raise serious red flags that the attorney general and her staff duck every time specific questions about omissions and inaccuracies in the attorney general’s report are raised,” Mr. Azzopardi said on Wednesday. “The public deserves specific answers from the attorney general as to the credibility of her report — especially while she mulls a run for governor.”

On Thursday, Mr. Azzopardi described the attorney general report as “fraudulent,” adding, “The Assembly is now in a box: They must either reveal the fraud or be complicit in the fraud.”

Andrew M. Cuomo desperately needs better PR people and more legal help. Speaking of which, one lawmaker from Cuomo's political party weighed in on the kooky claims:

Some lawmakers said that they had found some discrepancies between the attorney general’s report and the underlying evidence from the investigation — such as the date that an alleged incident of sexual harassment took place — but that the errors did not undermine the overarching conclusions of the investigation.

“I haven’t found any of the governor’s arguments very convincing,” said Assemblyman Phil Steck, a Democrat who represents parts of Schenectady. “The question is, is the discrepancy really material or not material? And so far, what they appear to have raised is not material.”

More significantly, Steck also indicated that Andrew M. Cuomo exploited state government employees and resources to produce his pandemic "leadership" book for his own personal gain.

“It certainly appears from the evidence I’m familiar with that people were working on the book during regular business hours when it was not plausible for them to argue that they were not on government time, so to speak,” Mr. Steck said.

The report also gives an indication of the kind of evidence the Assembly's impeachment probe investigators have collected regarding Team Cuomo's cover-up of the full extent of COVID deaths among nursing home residents during the period their deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect:

Investigators have also requested a broad array of documents related to nursing home deaths, including drafts of a Department of Health report that Cuomo officials rewrote last year to include a smaller number of nursing home deaths.

Michael Montesano, the highest-ranking Republican on the Assembly’s judiciary committee, said the Assembly had “hundreds of emails and text messages that address this issue, that go between all the top people from his office.”

With the exception of the apparent corroboration of the sexual harassment claims contained in the state attorney general's 3 August 2021 report and the response of Cuomo loyalists to them, which has been the primary topic of coverage for the New York Times, the report contained little new information.