‘Sex pest New York governor groped me at his mansion’
Cuomo aide waives anonymity to claim:
AN aide to New York’s governor Andrew Cuomo has waived her anonymity to accuse him of sexually assaulting her.
Brittany Commisso, 32, claimed he fondled her breast and groped her on two occasions at his mansion while she worked as his executive assistant.
‘What he did to me was a crime,’ Miss
Commisso said in an interview with the American TV network CBS last night.
Mr Cuomo, 63, was branded a sex pest last week after an inquiry found he harassed at least 11 women in their 20s and 30s including a state trooper assigned to protect him.
The Democrat has resisted calls to resign – including from President Joe Biden – and said in a statement he had ‘never touched anyone inappropriately or made inappropriate sexual advances’.
Miss Commisso said she was previously afraid to speak out for fear of being smeared by the governor but decided to speak out after hearing his denials.
She claimed he first groped her in December 2019 after he suggested they take a selfie together. ‘I felt while taking the selfie his hand go down my back on to my butt and he started rubbing it,’ she said. Not sliding it. Not, you know, quickly brushing over it – rubbing my butt.’
Miss Commisso, who began working in the governor’s office in 2017, said this left her so nervous that her hands shook, making it difficult for her to take the photo.
She claimed he groped her at his mansion again last November after hugging her in a ‘sexually aggressive manner’, adding: ‘He put his hand up my blouse and cupped my breast over my bra. Maybe to him he thought this was normal, but to me and the other women he did this to, it was not normal.’
Mr Cuomo has denied the episode took place, telling New York state investigators: ‘To touch a woman’s breasts, who I hardly know, in the mansion with ten staff around, with my family in the mansion, to say, “I don’t care who sees us”… I would have to lose my mind to do such a thing.’
Mr Cuomo became a national hero for his response to the pandemic but is now fighting for his political life.
Melissa DeRosa, his secretary, quit at the weekend, describing the past two years as ‘emotionally tiring’.