Another Cuomo staffer accuses governor of sexual harassment; woman is 6th to come forward
Gov. Andrew Cuomo again denied any wrongdoing Tuesday after a sixth woman accused the embattled governor of sexual harassment.
Cuomo said he was unaware of the latest allegation made by an aide who claims he touched her inappropriately late last year while the pair were working together at the Executive Mansion.
“As I said last week, this is very simple: I never touched any inappropriately,” the governor said during an afternoon call with reporters. “As I said last week, I never made any inappropriate advances. As I said last week, no one ever told me at the time I made them feel uncomfortable.
“Obviously, there are people who’ve said after the fact they felt uncomfortable. No one told me that at the time,” he addSenate ed.
Cuomo’s comments came moments after the Albany Times Union reported that the governor’s attorney was made aware of the latest claim over the weekend and already passed on to the attorney general’s office, which is overseeing a probe into mounting claims made against the governor, first reported on Tuesday.
The accuser, a member of the Executive Chamber staff, claims Cuomo inappropriately touched her during an encounter last year at the Executive Mansion, the official residence of the governor. The
Times Union chose not to name the woman since she could not immediately be reached.
Five other women, including four who worked for the governor throughout his career, have accused Cuomo of misconduct or inappropriate behavior. The scandal has engulfed the governor for weeks and led to increasing calls for his resignation.
Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers, became the highest-ranking of the governor’s fellow Democrats to call on him to leave office.
Cuomo has remained defiant, suggesting it would be “anti-democratic” for him to step down.
“There is no way I resign,” he said Sunday.
Over the weekend, Ana Liss, a former policy and operations aide to the governor, told the Wall Street Journal that Cuomo repeatedly inquired about her personal life, touched her, and on one occasion kissed her hand as she rose from her desk.
Separately, Karen Hinton, who worked with the governor when he led the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, said Cuomo once invited her to his hotel room during a work trip to California. He asked her personal questions about her marriage and hugged her repeatedly in a manner that was “too long, too tight, too intimate” when
she tried to leave.
Former aide Charlotte Bennett, 25, has said Cuomo asked her probing personal questions, including if she was interested in older men and indicated he was comfortable with “anyone above the age of 22” during private meetings at the height of the COVID crisis.
Bennett, Liss and Hinton came forward after former Cuomo adviser Lindsey Boylan published an essay last month accusing the 63-year-old of kissing her on the mouth without her consent during a meeting at his Manhattan office.
Another woman, Anna Ruch, 33, alleges the governor made unwanted advances toward her and planted an unsolicited kiss on her cheek at a 2019 wedding.
New York Attorney General Letitia James announced Monday that the investigation into Cuomo will be led by Joon
Kim, the former acting
U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Anne Clark, who has represented plaintiffs in sexual-harassment lawsuits.
Debra Katz, a lawyer representing Bennett, said James’ decision “demonstrates that Attorney General Letitia James is taking this matter very seriously.”
“We are encouraged by the experience and background of the attorneys who will be investigating Charlotte’s claims and expect the investigation will extend to the claims of the other women who we know to be out there,”
Katz said.
Roger Mudd, a political correspondent and anchor who was a major fixture in network TV news for over three decades, died Tuesday at his home in McLean, Virginia. He was 93.
Mudd died of complications from kidney failure, according to CBS News, where he worked from
1961 to 1981.
Mudd was best known for two major stories involving the Kennedy family. He was a political correspondent covering Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign and interviewed Kennedy shortly before being mortally wounded June 5 by an assassin at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Kennedy had won the California Democratic presidential primary that night.
In November 1979, Mudd sat down for a prime-time interview with Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy to talk about his Democratic primary challenge to then-President Jimmy Carter. Mudd directly asked Kennedy why he wanted to be president. The senator gave a hesitant and meandering answer that undermined his candidacy, and Carter went on to win the nomination in 1980.
The square-jawed Mudd had a sonorous voice and commanding appearance, making him an attractive candidate for an evening news anchor chair at a time when the nightly broadcasts set the agenda for the country.
Mudd was a frequent substitute for Walter Cronkite on the “CBS Evening News” and anchored the weekend editions of the broadcast in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was considered Cronkite’s heir apparent.
But Dan Rather was chosen to succeed Cronkite.
Mudd moved to NBC in 1981, where he shared the anchor desk with Tom Brokaw on “NBC Nightly News.” The arrangement did not last, as Brokaw became solo anchor of the broadcast in 1983 and Mudd was moved to the network’s Sunday roundtable program “Meet the Press.”
Mudd left NBC in 1987 to join PBS where he served as a political commentator and reporter for “The MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour” (now called “PBS Newshour”). In 1992, he became the principal on-air host for the History Channel until his retirement in 2004.
Mudd became a familiar face to TV news viewers in 1964 when he covered the U.S. Senate’s debate over the Civil Rights Bill. The debate lasted 67 days. He was involved in the network’s coverage of every major political story through the 1970s.
Mudd was also part of a Peabody Award-winning documentary “The Selling of the Pentagon,” a 1971 CBS News investigation that exposed the U.S. military’s taxpayer-financed public relations to burnish its image and sell the Vietnam War.
“He was an inspiration to all of us in the bureau,” said CBS News President Susan Zirinsky. “I sat directly across from him in the D.C. newsroom — Roger was big, not just in his physical presence but he was larger than life.”
Mudd’s wife of 54 years, writer and artist Emma Jeanne Spears Mudd, died in 2011. He is survived by their four children; 14 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.