- Cuomo lawyer asks sheriff to save investigation records
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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
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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:
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
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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.
