Neither pols nor polls
Just seven days after a team of five expert lawyers were appointed by state Attorney General Tish James to formally investigate allegations of sexual harassment against Gov. Cuomo, they heard from one of the accusers, Charlotte Bennett. She spent more than four hours with the probers on Monday, says Bennett’s attorney.
The speed is heartening and reinforces what this column said last week: “As the calls for Cuomo’s immediate resignation grow, the investigation is gearing up, an investigation that should continue and decide his fate.”
The outside, independent investigators, designated as special deputy attorneys general by James, are employment law specialist Anne Clark and former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Joon Kim. One of Clark’s law partners, Yannick Grant, is on board, as are two of Kim’s Cleary Gottlieb partners, Jennifer Kennedy Park and Abena Mainoo. Their collective resumes include internal investigations, complex disputes and employment-related discrimination and harassment, giving them the needed experience to suss through the claims and charges.
Their work, paid for by taxpayers, is the right way to determine what happened between Cuomo and his accusers, and what will happen next. Opinion polls showing favor or disfavor and elected officials demanding Cuomo’s resignation, or not, make for news and are interesting to read or hear or watch, but the fact-finders still have to find the facts.
Nothing against the 805 New York State registered voters polled by Siena College last week, who by a 50-35 majority expressed support for Cuomo not resigning, but it’s not up to them. Unlike
California, New York doesn’t have recall elections. To gauge his standing, it wouldn’t be surprising if Cuomo’s political operation is doing its own random sampling of New Yorkers and finding the same thing as the Siena pollsters.
With all due respect, the fact that a passel of state legislators and most of New York’s House members, along with Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, saying “go” doesn’t mean Cuomo should quit. Cuomo probably now regrets having in the past urged those similarly accused to resign, before formal investigations concluded. President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have it right: let the probers probe.
As the press digs and digs and new possible incidents come to light, the sheer number of accusers who have come forward, named or unnamed, shouldn’t be by itself the deciding factor. The severity of each charge must be weighed individually. In this case, as in many cases, all accusations are not equal. Should there be even a single, serious, substantiated occurrence that violated proper behavior, it would matter far more than multiple claims that may turn out to be minor or even unproven.
Which is why the special deputy AGs are conducting their work in private. Bennett’s attorney, Debra Katz, was perfectly within her rights and the rights of her client to divulge details of Bennett’s testimony to the special deputy AGs, including that Cuomo was supposedly preoccupied with the size of his hands.
Less intriguing, but more significant is that Katz also said that “we have full confidence in the investigation and the investigators.” That’s where this should be resolved.