We’re waiting, gov
We’d say the walls are closing in, but there isn’t very much room left for them to move. Gov. Cuomo’s lawyer said Friday, and repeated Sunday, that the governor himself would “very soon” personally address the claims by a state trooper that Cuomo touched her inappropriately and made numerous sexually harassing comments. Well, when?
As for the single most serious claim in the report released last week by Attorney General Tish James, overseen by attorneys Joon Kim and Anne Clark, it is no longer made by an anonymous accuser. Executive Assistant #1 is Brittany Commisso, who went on television Monday morning, putting a face and a name and a wrenching story to the incident Cuomo said no way, no how, never happened.
Before she went public, Commisso told James’ investigators that Cuomo called her to the Executive Mansion and groped her breast under her shirt, over her bra, sometime around Nov. 16, but that she could not pinpoint the date. Running with that precise date regardless, the governor’s attorneys put forward an extensive timeline insisting that the tale told was incompatible with documentary evidence.
We do not know and will never know precisely what happened behind a closed (and maybe or maybe not slammed-shut) door. Still, Cuomo has not convincingly disputed that over the course of months, he engaged an executive assistant roughly half his age in increasingly intimate hugs, behavior that on its own is deeply unbecoming of a governor.
Cuomo’s fiercest defender these many years has been his highest ranking aide, his right-hand woman Melissa DeRosa. Having been credibly accused of orchestrating a retaliation campaign against Lindsey Boylan, the governor’s first accuser, DeRosa resigned Sunday. Whether she realizes she’s on a sinking ship or is trying to make a principled statement that she can no longer stand by this man, or both, the message is unmistakable.
The Assembly is on the cusp of initiating impeachment proceedings. Will Cuomo drag the state and himself through the muck or finally stand and face the music?