‘Time’ for me to go, sez head of group criticized for consulting with Cuomo
Time’s Up president Tina Tchen resigned her post Thursday, following reports that her team consulted former Gov. Andrew Cuomo while he battled sexual misconduct accusations in Albany.
“I am grateful for Times Up, and the time I’ve had,” Tchen began her resignation tweet.
Pressure had been building throughout the week for Tchen, who served as former First Lady Michelle Obama’s chief of staff, to step away from the 3½-yearold victims’ rights organization she began running in October 2019.
“Now is the time for TIME’S UP to evolve and move forward as there is so much more work to
do from women,” she tweeted. “It is clear that I am not the leader who can accomplish that in this moment.”
“The audacity of Tina Tchen to remain in her position after all of this news is really a slap in the face,” Cuomo accuser Charlotte Bennett told The Daily Beast. “I don’t understand how she can be a leader in this space anymore.”
Other critics have accused Time’s Up of being too tightly connected to the Democratic party. Tchen said on Twitter that she never gave Cuomo advice and was “furious that the Governor’s office used me and TIME’S UP as a justification for their defense.”
A New York attorney general investigation into accusations against Cuomo found that a law firm tied to Time’s Up co-founder Roberta Kaplan drafted a letter painting one of the governor’s accusers in a negative light, which was allegedly approved by the not-named “head of the advocacy group Time’s Up.”