16 January 2024: NY Taxpayers Pay $565,000 for Cuomo Legal Defense for Sexual Harassment Charges

Cuomo’s campaign gets $565,000 from taxpayers. And more is on the way.

Andrew M. Cuomo may have chosen to resign in disgrace rather than face impeachment proceedings, but that doesn't mean he has to pay for the legal bills related to allegations of his sexual harassment of state government employees.

New York state taxpayers will pick up the bill. In fact, this report indicates they just paid the first $565,000 for what appears to be a very generous perk for New York state officials. Here's an excerpt from the report:

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s campaign account balance has grown for the first time since he left office over two years ago, inching up from $7.7 million to $7.8 million over the past six months.

But the growth isn’t due to a surge in donations for Cuomo, who has been weighing a New York City mayoral run.

Rather, it’s due to a New York law that requires the state to reimburse legal fees for elected officials who have been accused of crimes that don’t result in convictions. The Albany County sheriff’s office brought a misdemeanor charge of forcible touching against Cuomo in 2021, which was tossed after prosecutors concluded the complaint was defective.

Cuomo received a $565,000 check from the state comptroller’s office last week, thanks to the law.

That likely won’t be the end of the money the ex-governor receives from the state.

According his campaign finance reports Tuesday, Cuomo paid $300,000 to law firm Holwell Shuster & Goldberg since July. That brings the total he has spent on legal fees to $6.9 million since the Assembly started impeachment proceedings in 2021.

The money, which has gone to a wide variety of investigations on allegations that include sexual misconduct and the misuse of state resources to write his pandemic memoir, won’t all be reimbursable. Still, Cuomo’s campaign is expected to get back several million dollars from the state as they work out the details with the comptroller’s office.

This entry was added to the timeline on 21 January 2024.