NY’s AG quits amid allegations of abuse

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who had risen to prominence as an antagonist of the Trump administration, resigned Monday night, hours after being accused in an article published by the magazine New Yorker of physically abusing four women.

“It’s been my great honor and privilege to serve as attorney general for the people of the State of New York,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “In the last several hours, serious allegations, which I strongly contest, have been made against me.”

Two women, Michelle Manning Barish and Tanya Selvaratnam, spoke to the magazine on the record and said they were in romantic relationships with Schneiderman when he choked and slapped them, leading them to seek medical treatment.

Selvaratnam said Schneiderman warned her that he could have her followed and her phones tapped. Both women said he threatened to kill them if they ended their relationships with him, according to the New Yorker.

A third woman made similar accusations of nonconsensual physical violence, and a fourth, a lawyer who has held high positions in the New York legal sphere, told the New Yorker that after she rejected one of Schneiderman’s advances, he “slapped her across the face with such force that it left a mark that lingered the next day.” All four women said their physical abuse was not consensual.

Before he resigned, Schneiderman said in a statement on Twitter: “In the privacy of intimate relationships, I have engaged in role-playing and other consensual sexual activity. I have not assaulted anyone. I have never engaged in nonconsensual sex, which is a line I would not cross.”