8 November 2021: Albany County Sheriff Included Wrong Victim Statement in Filing Misdemeanor Charge Against Cuomo

Criminal complaint against Cuomo includes transcript with misstatement by alleged victim

This report points to an error the Albany County Sheriff's office made when filing for criminal "forcible touching" misdemeanor charges against Andrew M. Cuomo

Commisso told the investigators in a May 17 interview, under oath, that she and the governor were alone in his second-floor office when he came out from behind his desk and groped her breast before closing the door to the office. In a series of interviews with the Times Union and CBS News earlier this year, Commisso, 33, had said the governor groped her after closing the door to his office.

However, in the May interview with the attorney general's investigators, Joon R. Kim and Anne Clark, Commisso quickly corrected her statement and outlined the same sequence of events she had described to the Times Union, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

It's unclear why the Albany County Sheriff's Office, which filed the criminal complaint against Cuomo two weeks ago, included the excerpt of Commisso's erroneous statement to the attorney general's investigators, but not her corrected statement to them in that same interview.

The Albany County Sheriff's office's filing of its criminal charge filing points to some sloppy handling of documentation, but nothing that undermines its misdemeanor case. If anything, correcting the record removes factors that could otherwise undermine the case against Cuomo.

The report also provides more excerpts from Brittany Commisso's sworn testimony to the state attorney general office's investigators. If you're not familiar with her story, do click through.