READY FOR HEAVE-CUO
Assembly Republicans plan impeachment push
Assembly Republicans on Monday drafted a resolution to impeach Gov. Cuomo amid mounting allegations of inappropriate behavior with women and the scandal over nursinghome deaths from COVID-19.
The resolution will be formally introduced on Tuesday, said a spokesman for Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay.
“We’re going to introduce this resolution because we believe the time has come,” Barclay (R-Syracuse) said at a press conference earlier in the day.
“There’s been one bombshell after another,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve used the term bombshell, especially this weekend, anytime more in my life.”
Barclay’s comments came after two more women — former aides Ana Liss and Karen Hinton — came forward on Saturday and brought the number of Cuomo’s accusers to five.
Hinton, the wife of lobbyist and former Cuomo administration official Howard Glaser, claims Cuomo twice pulled her into an “intimate embrace” in 2000, when he was the federal housing secretary under then-President Bill Clinton.
A short time after the GOP announcement, 20 Democratic assemblywomen — including some of the chamber’s most powerful members — signaled that they would oppose impeachment proceedings before the conclusion of a probe into the allegations against Cuomo.
That investigation will be conducted by outside lawyers hired on Monday by state Attorney General Letitia James.
“We believe that the attorney general will exercise due process and expediency in her deliberations,” the Democratic assemblywomen said.
“We request that she be allowed the appropriate time to complete her investigation rather than undermine her role and responsibility as the chief law-enforcement officer of the state of New York.”
Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes (D-Buffalo), Ways and Means Committee Chairwoman Helene Weinstein (D-Brooklyn) and Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte (D-Brooklyn), who is also the Brooklyn Democratic Party chair, were among those who issued the statement.
On Sunday, Cuomo reportedly told Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) that lawmakers would have to impeach him if they want him out of office.
That conversation, reported by The Associated Press, came shortly before Cuomo publicly vowed for a second time not to resign, which led Stewart-Cousins to issue a statement calling on him to quit.
“Every day there is another account that is drawing away from the business of government,” she said.
“We need to govern without daily distraction. For the good of the state, Governor Cuomo must resign.”
Cuomo traveled to the Big Apple on Monday to visit the around-the-clock vaccination site at the Javits Center, with his office announcing that 123,124 doses of coronavirus vaccine were administered statewide in the previous 24 hours, marking the “best single-day performance” in the nation.
The event was closed to news coverage, and reporters gathered outside afterward saw two armored, black Dodge Chargers with tinted windows pull out of the convention center’s underground garage and head to the West Side Highway.
A black Chevy Tahoe with tinted windows blocked traffic to give the sports cars clear passage on West 34th Street.
Asked to comment on the GOP impeachment move, Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said: “There’s a job to be done and New Yorkers elected the governor to do it, which is why he has been focused on getting as many shots in arms as possible, making sure New York is getting its fair share of Washington’s COVID relief package and working on a state budget that is due in three weeks.”