Now, get to the truth
It’s welcome news that Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s efforts to manipulate an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment against him failed, and that he has authorized Attorney General Letitia James to get to the bottom of the matter.
Her first task is to ensure that whoever has a role in this investigation, at any stage, has no entanglements with the governor or anyone close to him (or his accusers, for that matter). The credibility of Ms. James and her office are on the line now, too.
Cuomo faces at least two accusations of harassment, one from Lindsey Boylan, a former high-ranking economic development official and special counsel to the governor who says Mr. Cuomo sometimes touched her lower back, legs and arms, kissed her on the lips after a meeting in his office, and made inappropriate remarks, including suggesting during a flight on a state plane, “Let’s play strip poker.” Ms. Boylan, a married mother of two, left state employment in 2018 and is now running for Manhattan borough president.
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The second accusation comes from Charlotte Bennett, a former executive assistant and health policy adviser. She told The New York Times Mr. Cuomo asked about her sex and romantic life and if she ever slept with older men, which she took as a sexual overture. Ms. Bennett, 25, reported it and was transferred to another job outside the Executive Chamber. She quit last fall.
Mr. Cuomo, in a parsed, somewhat tortuous statement, denied that he had any inappropriate contact or that he propositioned or flirted with the women, but acknowledged that “my interactions may have been insensitive or too personal and that some of my comments, given my position, made others feel in ways I never intended.” He said he was sorry if he was misunderstood.
Misunderstanding or not, it doesn’t help Mr. Cuomo’s public image that he tried to hand this investigation off to a former judge of his own choosing, one who turned out to have worked in a law firm with one of his closest advisers. When that didn’t fly even among lawmakers in his own Democratic party, he tried to put the matter jointly in the hands of Ms. James and the state’s chief judge, Janet Difiore, whom Mr. Cuomo appointed and who also served as his hand-picked executive director of the state’s ethics commission — which has drawn criticism for the degree to which Mr. Cuomo controls it. That didn’t sit well with legislators or Ms. James, and Mr. Cuomo eventually relented. On Monday, he formally referred the matter to Ms. James alone, as he should have at the start, before involving Judge Difiore — who should have immediately refused.
It’s essential that this review look not just at Mr. Cuomo’s behavior, but at how complaints were handled, including Ms. Bennett’s transfer. While she says she was happy in the new post before she quit, it’s a violation of the law to take action against a person who files a harassment complaint as a way of “resolving ” it.
The best thing Mr. Cuomo can do right now is restrain his impulse to control a situation. The time for that, unfortunately, was before he made the comments he now regrets. Or regrets people misunderstanding. There’s a big difference. Hopefully in the end New Yorkers will have, if nothing else, clarity.