Cuo led others into corruption
FOR those who needed convincing or a reminder, there is fresh proof that Andrew Cuomo wasn’t just corrupt. He was also a great corrupter of others. The latest example involves his brother, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo. Documents released by the state attorney general show that, despite public denials, Chris played a secret role in trying to protect the former governor from sexual-harassment allegations.
The disclosure is putting Chris on the hot seat with his bosses, his audience and other journalists, some of whom are demanding he be fired for unethical conduct.
Notably, CNN did not defend the host of its most popular program. The network said Monday in a statement that the document trove “deserves a thorough review” and that executives would have “conversations” in coming days.
Late Tuesday, it suspended him indefinitely, saying it had not fully realized the extent of his involvement in his brother’s defense.
And so Chris Cuomo joins a long list of accomplished people who heedlessly rushed to help the former governor, only to see their reputations seriously damaged as the truth emerged about the extent of Andrew Cuomo’s wrongdoing — and their complicity. Many of Andrew’s helpers crashed and burned, their careers in tatters.
The fallout started within days of the August release of the initial AG report when Josh Vlasto and Richard Bamberger left as managing directors at p.r. firm Kivvit, which got tens of millions of dollars in state contracts under Cuomo. Both had been spokesmen for Cuomo and returned to help as he tried to smear Lindsey Boylan, the first woman who publicly accused the governor of harassment.
In her testimony, top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa blamed Vlasto for pushing to release Boylan’s personnel file, which included supposedly confidential workplace information.
That same issue led to the undoing of Alphonso David, who was fired in September by the Human Rights Campaign, where he was its first black president. A former lawyer in Cuomo’s office, David also had participated in the effort to smear Boylan, according to the AG report.
Yet for sheer hypocrisy, it would be hard to beat the fall of two top leaders of Time’s Up. Their organization was founded in 2018 with the goal of helping women in the #MeToo era of sexual harassment, but Time’s Up Chair Roberta Kaplan and CEO Tina Tchen both lost their jobs over their efforts to help Cuomo undercut Boylan’s claim.
No doubt all these people believed, or wanted to believe, Andrew Cuomo’s complete denials of the growing accusations against him. It’s also worth noting that all of them had benefited in the past from their association with him, and some owed their lucrative post-government jobs to Cuomo.
Nobody operating in the public sphere would have hired them without Cuomo’s tacit approval.
So it’s not completely surprising that when he summoned them for help, they agreed. They may have felt they had little choice.
What is surprising is the extent to which they put their credibility on the line on the basis simply of Cuomo’s say-so. After all, agreeing to help trash a woman making sexual-harassment allegations in this era and after the downfall of Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer and others is, on its face, reckless unless you’ve got compelling evidence.
Absent that, you’re out on a limb with Cuomo, which is where they were when the limb crashed to the ground.
Their roles become clear — and revolting — once the full truth emerged in the AG report, where investigators concluded Cuomo had sexually harassed 11 women and tried to retaliate against Boylan and others.
Of course, Chris Cuomo is in a category of one. No fair-minded person could begrudge his effort to help his brother in a midst of a shattering career and personal crisis.
The problem, however, goes to the nature of the help Chris provided and whether he was honest with CNN viewers and his bosses. The newly released documents suggest he was not.
To start with, Chris Cuomo made the questionable decision to have his brother on for interviews during the pandemic. That was when Andrew was riding high and getting mostly rave reviews for his daily updates on infections, hospitalizations and deaths.
The updates were must-see TV and served as a Democratic alternative to then-President Trump’s updates. There was even a brief moment where Andrew Cuomo was seen as a better presidential candidate than Joe Biden.
Some of the CNN segments were suitably straightforward, but others turned into yuk-fests and family chit-chat that was out of bounds. The segments also were unacceptably tilted because Chris avoided any mention of the criticism of his brother, including over the lethal order that exposed many nursing home patients to COVID.
Later, it would become clear that Andrew Cuomo hid the true number of nursing-home deaths at the same time he was negotiating a book contract on his leadership. Whatever his intent, Chris helped promote this fraudulent sequence.
CNN was fine with the arrangement at first, but later ended it as criticism grew. And when the sexual-harassment allegations began, Chris’ show was understandably silent, but we know now he was privately and feverishly working behind the scenes to help his brother quash the charges.
After Andrew resigned in August, Chris said on air that, among other things, “I never made calls to the press about my brother’s situation.”
In fact, during a six-hour interview with investigators the previous month, Chris had admitted he had done just that. Transcripts and e-mails show he drafted statements for his brother and, in correspondence with DeRosa, offered and agreed to use his “sources” to check out leads and rumors about other women coming forward.
CNN will draw its own conclusions about his conduct, but there are no remaining questions about Andrew Cuomo’s conduct. He is a human wrecking ball who destroyed himself and the reputations of so many others who foolishly trusted him.