GOV’S ‘COVERUP’
A current aide to Gov. Cuomo has accused him of trying to cover up the allegation that he groped one of her colleagues — while also sharing her own disturbing interactions with the governor, a report said on Friday.
Alyssa McGrath told The New York Times that the unidentified coworker confided to her that Cuomo had touched her breast under her blouse at the Executive Mansion late last year.
“She froze when he started doing that stuff to her,” McGrath told the newspaper.
“He told her specifically not to tell me,” McGrath added, saying Cuomo knew they were friends who regularly communicated.
McGrath, 33, also detailed her own creepy encounters with Cuomo, 63, alleging that he looked down her blouse and told her, in Italian, that she was beautiful.
She also said Cuomo asked her about her lack of a wedding ring and the status of her divorce.
McGrath didn’t allege that Cuomo touched her inappropriately but said his actions amounted to sexual harassment.
“He has a way of making you feel very comfortable around him, almost like you’re his friend,” she said.
“But then you walk away from the encounter or conversation, in your head going, ‘I can’t believe I just had that interaction with the governor of New York.’ ”
Friday’s report made McGrath the first current state employee to publicly accuse Cuomo of misconduct amid a series of allegations that have prompted calls for his resignation, as well as an independent investigation by Attorney General Letitia James and an impeachment inquiry by the state Assembly’s Judiciary Committee.
The woman who was allegedly groped relayed her account to other people, the Albany Times Union has said, citing a source familiar with what she told them.
State officials referred the matter to Albany police for possible criminal investigation, Cuomo’s acting counsel, Beth Garvey, said last week.
It is the most serious allegation against Cuomo to date.
McGrath said she was furious when Cuomo claimed at a March 3 news conference that “I never touched anyone inappropriately” — a phrase he has since repeated. “It makes me really upset to hear him speak about this and completely deny all allegations,” she said. “And I have no doubt in my mind that all of these accusers are telling the truth.”
McGrath has worked as an executive assistant in Cuomo’s office since May 2018, her LinkedIn résumé says. She earned $64,383 in fiscal year 2019 with a base salary of $60,000, according to the See Through NY Web site.
McGrath doesn’t work directly for Cuomo, but e-mails obtained by the Times showed she and the woman who claimed to be groped were often summoned on weekends to the state Capitol or Executive Mansion, the Times said.
One e-mail, sent to both women by a scheduling official and dated Feb. 29, 2020, said, “Hi gals,” and added, “Who can spend a little while with him when he gets back on the book signing project?”
It was unclear what book was being referred to. Cuomo’s pandemic memoir, “American Crisis,” was published in October.
While the two women were working with Cuomo in the Capitol that day, they discussed their plans to travel to Florida on vacation.
Cuomo asked if the co-worker, who was married, was going to try to meet men and “mingle” on the trip, the Times reported. McGrath, who has a young child, was separated from her husband at the time.
Both women laughed off the question, but Cuomo “called us ‘mingle mamas’ for the rest of the day,” McGrath said.
McGrath told the Times that Cuomo began making her uncomfortable shortly after she was hired.
In his office at the mansion in early 2019, Cuomo asked if McGrath, who is of Italian heritage, spoke Italian and said something in that language that she later asked her parents to translate, she said.
“It was commenting on how beautiful I was,” she said.
A short time later, she was called into Cuomo’s Capitol office to take dictation.
“I put my head down waiting for him to start speaking, and he didn’t start speaking,” she said. “So I looked up to see what was going on. And he was blatantly looking down my shirt.”
Cuomo then made a “subtle reference” to her necklace, which was in her shirt, McGrath recalled.
McGrath also recalled a 2019 office Christmas party where Cuomo “kissed me on the forehead” and posed for a photo with her and her co-worker in which “he is gripping our sides very tightly.”
That New Year’s Eve, Cuomo had the co-worker pose for a photo with him and had her send it to McGrath, she said, adding that she suspected he wanted “to make me jealous.”
“We were told from the beginning that was a typical move of his,” she said. “Who was the girl of the week? Who was the girl of the month?”
A lawyer for Cuomo, Rita Glavin, told the Times that “the governor has greeted men and women with hugs and a kiss on the cheek, forehead or hand. Yes, he has posed for photographs with his arm around them. Yes, he uses Italian phrases like ‘ciao, bella.’ ”
“None of this is remarkable, although it may be old-fashioned. He has made clear that he has never made inappropriate advances or inappropriately touched anyone.”
McGrath’s lawyer, Mariann Wang, responded, “The governor’s deflections are not credible.”
“This was not just friendly banter. Ms. McGrath understands the common phrase ‘ciao, bella.’ ”