Cuomo won’t be charged for alleged incident with trooper
NEW YORK — Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo won’t face criminal charges after a female state trooper said she felt “completely violated” by his unwanted touching at an event at Belmont Park in September 2019, a Long Island prosecutor said Thursday.
Acting Nassau County District Attorney Joyce Smith said in a statement that an investigation found the allegations against Mr. Cuomo “credible, deeply troubling but not criminal under New York law.”
Ms. Smith opened the investigation after details of the encounter appeared in Attorney General Letitia James’ August report on sexual harassment allegations against Mr. Cuomo. The report chronicled accusations from 11 women and led to Mr. Cuomo’s resignation from office, though he has attacked the findings as biased and inaccurate.
Mr. Cuomo’s spokesperson Rich Azzopardi, in a statement released Thursday afternoon, said Mr. Cuomo didn’t recall touching the trooper.
Mr. Azzopardi said it was common for the former governor to acknowledge a trooper who would hold the door open for him. Mr. Azzopardi didn’t respond to a question about whether Mr. Cuomo would acknowledge troopers by touching them.
“As he has said many times, Gov. Cuomo did not remember touching the trooper, but said that it was a common custom for him to acknowledge the presence of a trooper — male or female — holding a door as he walked past them,” Mr. Azzopardi said. “This was only meant to be an acknowledgment of their presence and nothing more.”
Ms. James’ report found that Mr. Cuomo sexually harassed at least 11 women in violation of federal and state civil rights law. But she said pursuing potential criminal penalties would be up to prosecutors.
According to the report, the trooper said Mr. Cuomo ran the palm of his left hand across her abdomen, to her belly button and then to her right hip, where she kept her gun, while she held a door open for him as he left an event at Belmont Park on Sept. 23, 2019.
Mr. Cuomo was at the state- owned racetrack, home to the last leg of horse racing’s Triple Crown, to break ground on a new arena for the NHL’s New York Islanders. The arena, adjacent to the track’s main grandstand and paddock, opened last month.
The trooper, a member of Mr. Cuomo’s security detail, told Ms. James’ investigators that Mr. Cuomo’s conduct at the event made her feel “completely violated because to me, like that’s between my chest and my privates.”
Ms. James’ report said that although the trooper was upset by Mr. Cuomo’s unwanted touching, she did not feel she could do anything about it.
“I’m a trooper, newly assigned to the travel team. Do I want to make waves? No,” she said, according to the report. “I’ve heard horror stories about people getting kicked off the detail or transferred over like little things. ... I had no plans to report it.”
The trooper told Ms. James’ investigators that what happened at Belmont Park was just one of many instances of Mr. Cuomo’s “flirtatious” and “creepy” behavior toward her.
One time, in an elevator, he traced his finger from her neck to her back, she said. Another time, he asked to kiss her in the driveway outside his Mount Kisco home and proceeded to peck her cheek, she said.
“I remember just freezing, being — in the back of my head, I’m like, oh, how do I say no politely?” she told investigators.
The Nassau County investigation was limited to the encounter at Belmont Park.