Wants corrections
Letter seeks corrections but attorney general spokesperson calls probe “exhaustive”
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s lawyer wants amendments to a report issued by the independent investigators retained by the state attorney general.
As Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo prepares to leave office, his personal attorney held a briefing on Friday asking for significant amendments to a report issued Aug. 3 by independent investigators retained by state Attorney General Letitia James.
Cuomo’s attorney, Rita Glavin, said she is sending a letter to James’ office seeking corrections and additions to the report, which concluded 11 women who had accused Cuomo of sexual harassment or inappropriate touching had made credible allegations. Since the report’s release, Glavin has repeatedly characterized the findings as the results of a biased investigation that excluded evidence favorable to the governor.
“We’re asking that the report ... be made complete, and that the material omissions that were left out be put in,” Glavin said.
Cuomo announced on Aug. 10 he would resign, but the governor still faces criminal investigations related to alleged inappropriate touching. He no longer faces the prospect of impeachment by the state Assembly, but the chamber plans to issue a report concerning its own inquiry into the sexual harassment allegations and more.
In a statement, James’ office did not appear receptive to Glavin’s edits.
The “investigation was exhaustive, thorough, and without outside influence, period,” Delaney Kempner, James’ director of communications, said. “Given the multiple, ongoing criminal investigations into the governor’s conduct, it would not be appropriate to respond further to these baseless attacks. The 168-page report and additional 486 pages of exhibits clearly corroborate the experiences of the complainants, yet the governor and his aides continue to undermine those who seek to expose this dangerous conduct.
“We cannot allow survivors of sexual harassment to be further traumatized by these continued attacks, lies, and conspiracy theories,” Kempner said.
As in previous briefings, Glavin attempted to poke holes in the accounts of two accusers: Lindsay Boylan, a former economic development aide to Cuomo, and Brittany Commisso, an executive assistant who has accused Cuomo of groping her breast, the most serious allegation against him. Glavin also raised questions about the accounts of two women whose allegations had received relatively little attention, and were not centerpieces of the attorney general’s report.
Concerning Commisso, Glavin said records show she was not in the Executive Mansion last November — where she says Cuomo groped her — on any day other than Nov. 16. Glavin said contemporaneous records from that day, such as emails, indicate such an incident could not have occurred that day.
The attorney general’s report said that the incident happened Nov. 16, but mentioned in a footnote that Commisso did not recall the exact date. The outside investigators retained by James did not seek records from Cuomo’s office that verified or disproved whether the incident occurred that day, Glavin said.
Since the report’s release, Commisso has said the Nov. 16 date is incorrect, and has pegged the date as around Nov. 25. On the day in question, Commisso said, she went to the governor’s second-floor office and helped him text a note from his iphone to Cuomo aide Stephanie Benton. Commisso has encouraged the Albany County Sheriff ’s Office, which is investigating the alleged incident, to subpoena records showing the exact date the text was sent.
Glavin said the attorney general’s investigators are obligated to seek contemporaneous records.
Concerning Boylan, Glavin called on James’ office to add information to the report about several matters: a conversation between James’ chief of staff and Boylan’s top political consultant; the resignation of a staffer for a Boylan political campaign after Boylan tweeted allegations about Cuomo; allegedly threatening texts Boylan sent to a former Cuomo aide; and testimony from a witness that allegedly impugned Boylan’s credibility.
“The attorney general’s office conducted a comprehensive investigation and we have the utmost confidence in the report’s findings,” responded Jill Basinger, Boylan’s attorney. “The governor and his attorney refuse to accept the consequences of his actions and instead are choosing to engage in victim blaming. Victim blaming is never a defense. Ever. Full stop.”
Glavin addressed allegations from two women that she previously had not focused upon. One was Virginia Limmiatis, who in May 2017 attended a Cuomo event in upstate New York on behalf of her employer, an energy company. Limmiatis stood in a rope line to meet the governor, and wore a shirt that had the name of the energy company across the chest.
When Cuomo reached Limmiatis, he allegedly “ran two fingers across her chest, pressing down on each of the letters as he did so and reading out the name” of the energy company as he went. He then allegedly leaned in, made a remark seeking to excuse his behavior (“I’m going to say I see a spider on your shoulder”), then brushed “his hand in the area between her shoulder and breasts.”
Glavin said there were “hundreds” of photos of the event, and on Friday showed several depicting interaction between Limmiatis and Cuomo that Glavin said “contradict and undermine” her account. The photos were not included in the attorney general’s report, and Glavin asked they now be included.
An attorney for Limmiatis, Mariann Wang, said the photos presented by Glavin do not depict the moments when Cuomo engaged in inappropriate touching.
“Ms. Limmiatis did not just testify under oath — she also had multiple witnesses, including people at the event itself whom she did not know well, and others who were close to her,” Wang said. “They likewise provided statements under oath and confirmed to the AG that she had confided in them, telling them moments afterwards, and in the days afterwards, that Cuomo had touched her breasts and that it was profoundly upsetting and humiliating — and that he made up a story about it to cover himself.”
Glavin addressed allegations from a woman referred to in the report as “State Entity Employee #1,” who alleged that in September 2019, Cuomo touched her rear end in an unwelcome manner, after Cuomo had requested a photograph together following a public event.
Cuomo “took his hand and double tapped the area where (State Entity Employee #1’s) butt and (her) thigh meet” and then moved his fingers upward to “kind of grab that area between (her) butt and (her) thigh,” according to the attorney general’s report. State Entity Employee #1 testified that she immediately shared what had happened with her supervisor.
A day afterward, the woman wrote down what Cuomo had done and emailed it to herself. She provided a copy of the email to investigators, which was consistent with her testimony, the attorney general’s report stated.
Glavin said that, as Cuomo’s attorney, she had never been given the name of this Cuomo accuser. She also noted that the report omitted the exact wording of the woman’s contemporaneous email. The email stated that Cuomo “tapped her butt cheek twice” in two “quick pats’’ with his palm, causing her “shock and anger.” But the email, included in the report’s appendix, did not state Cuomo had grabbed her butt.
Glavin called for the report’s finding — specifically that the woman’s allegation that Cuomo had “grabbed her butt” was credible — to be retracted.
Finally, Glavin cited new findings — which she did not detail — concerning the credibility of another accuser, Charlotte Bennett, who accused the governor of “grooming” her with inappropriate questions about her sex life. Glavin said she would not specify the details out of respect for Bennett, but that the information would be provided to the attorney general and Assembly.
Bennett’s account of her interactions with Cuomo has largely gone unchallenged, and the incidents were memorialized in contemporaneous text messages sent by the former Cuomo aide.
An attorney for Bennett, Debra Katz, said that Glavin’s “rank insinuation that Charlotte is a liar flies in the face of the attorney general’s express finding that Charlotte’s allegations against the governor were credible.”
“It also contradicts the governor’s own special counsel, Judy Mogul, and chief of staff, Jill Desrosiers, who found Charlotte’s allegations credible when she first reported them more than a year ago,” Katz said. “Charlotte will not be intimidated by the governor or his operatives.”