Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Probe: ‘Overwhelming evidence’ of unethical behavior by Cuomo
ALBANY, N.Y. — A legislative investigation released Monday found “overwhelming evidence” that former Gov. Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed women and that he ordered state workers to help produce his book on pandemic leadership during work hours.
The report also found that Cuomo’s staff “substantially revised” a state health department report on COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes to exclude statistics that might have dimmed his reputation as a pandemic leader.
The findings, authored by a law firm hired by the Assembly’s Judiciary Committee, were widely expected, and the sections on sexual harassment largely echo allegations previously made in a report last summer by the state’s attorney general.
But it offered some new details, particularly around the $5.2 million private deal Cuomo struck to write a book, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons on the Pandemic.”
Cuomo had promised state ethics officials that no state resources would be used on the book, but the Assembly’s investigators at the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell said they found evidence the governor had his staff spend copious amounts of time on the project.
“One senior state official explained that book-related assignments were given by superiors and expected to be completed, and the work was not voluntary,” the report said.
Junior and senior staff members told investigators they were asked to perform book tasks during their work day, including transcribing dictations, printing and delivering documents, and attending meetings with agents and publishers.
Cuomo’s spokesperson, Richard Azzopardi, said Monday that senior staff who helped with the book did so on their personal time. He denied that junior staff was involved, as the report claims.
Jan. 6 panel: A committee investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection issued subpoenas Monday to five more individuals, including former President Donald Trump’s ally Roger Stone and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
The subpoenas include demands for documents and testimony from Stone and Jones as well as three people accused of organizing and promoting the two rallies.
The committee has already interviewed more than 150 people across government, social media and law enforcement, including some former Trump aides who have been cooperative.
Ethiopia crisis: Ethiopia’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning prime minister says he will lead his country’s army “from the battlefront” beginning Tuesday, a dramatic new step in a devastating yearlong war.
“This is a time when leading a country with martyrdom is needed,” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said in a statement posted on social media Monday night. His government declared a state of emergency earlier this month.
An estimated tens of thousands of people have been killed in the war between Ethiopian and allied forces and fighters from the country’s northern Tigray region, who long dominated the national government before Abiy took office. The United States and others have warned that Africa’s secondmost populous country could fracture and destabilize the Horn of Africa.
The statement by the prime minister, a former soldier, did not say where he will go Tuesday.
Health care workers: Vice President Kamala Harris announced Monday that the Biden administration is investing $1.5 billion from the coronavirus aid package to address the health care worker shortage in underserved communities.
The funding will go to the National Health Service Corps, Nurse Corps and Substance Use Disorder Treatment and Recovery programs, all federal programs that offer scholarship and loan repayments for health care students and workers if they pledge to work in underserved and high-risk communities.
The money includes funds from the American Rescue Plan and other sources and will support more than 22,700 providers, marking the largest number of providers enrolled in these programs in history, according to the White House.
Sudan leader: Sudan’s reinstated prime minister said in an interview that aired Monday that he will have the authority to form his own independent government, according to the agreement he signed a day earlier with the country’s top generals who overthrew him in a coup last month.
Abdalla Hamdok said he foresaw the next government as focusing on rewriting the country’s constitution and holding elections on time.
On Sunday, Sudan’s deposed prime minister signed a deal that will see him reinstated, almost a month after a military coup put him under house arrest.
Thousands of Sudanese later took to the streets Sunday to denounce what many called a betrayal of the democratic cause by their former leader.
Cohen sentence: Michael Cohen, who was former President Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer until his 2018 arrest, said Monday that his three-year prison sentence — mostly spent in home confinement — was over as he took another swipe at his former boss and vowed to continue cooperating with law enforcement probes.
A smiling Cohen emerged from Manhattan federal court after signing documents and speaking with authorities about his upcoming three-year term of supervised release.
Cohen was sentenced to prison in December 2018 after pleading guilty to campaign finance charges and lying to Congress, among other crimes.
In all, he spent about 13 ½ months behind prison walls and a year and a half in home confinement.
Colo. school shooting: Police in the Denver suburb of Aurora have arrested three teenagers in connection with the shooting of three students in a high school parking lot Friday, a Colorado newspaper reported Monday.
Police arrested one 16-year-old boy late Friday and two more 16-year-old boys Sunday, Sentinel Colorado reported.
All three face charges of first-degree attempted murder.
Friday’s shooting at Hinkley High School injured two boys, ages 16 and 17, and a 17-year-old girl, police said. None of the injuries was life-threatening.
The shooting came four days after six students from another school in the same Denver suburb, Aurora Central High School, were wounded by bullets fired from at least one car driving by a park near the school. Police have not arrested anyone yet in last week’s shootings.