Ex-aide says Cuomo kissed her, suggested strip poker
Republican leaders blast Pelosi’s draft on panel’s makeup
ALBANY, N.Y. — A former member of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration who previously accused him of sexual harassment offered new details Wednesday, saying he once kissed her on the lips without consent after a private meeting.
Lindsey Boylan said that during her more than three years working as an economic adviser in the administration, Cuomo “would go out of his way to touch me on my lower back, arms and legs,” compared her to one of his rumored ex-girlfriends and once joked they should play strip poker.
Boylan, a Democrat running for Manhattan borough president, wrote in a post on the website Medium that the kiss happened after she gave Cuomo a one-on-one briefing on economic and infrastructure projects in his New York City office.
“As I got up to leave and walk toward an open door, he stepped in front of me and kissed me on the lips. I was in shock, but I kept walking,” she said. “The idea that someone might think I held my high-ranking position because of the Governor’s ‘crush’ on me was more demeaning than the kiss itself.”
She confirmed that she had posted the blog, but did not respond to a request to comment further.
Boylan, a former deputy secretary for economic development and special adviser to the governor, tweeted in December that Cuomo sexually harassed her, but she didn’t reveal details and declined interview requests.
At the time, Cuomo denied that he did anything inappropriate.
“Look, I fought for and I believe a woman has the right to come forward and express her opinion and express issues and concerns that she has,” Cuomo told reporters. “But it’s just not true.”
Cuomo’s spokesperson, Caitlin Girouard, said Wednesday that all of Boylan’s “claims of inappropriate behavior are quite simply false.”
Boylan said she initially spoke up about her experiences because of reports Cuomo was being considered as President Joe Biden’s pick for attorney general.
She decided to elaborate, she wrote, because she hoped it would empower other women to come forward. The more detailed account of her allegations against Cuomo comes amid mounting criticism about the work culture around the three-term governor and how he wields his power.
Boylan joined the administration in 2015 at Empire State Development, which runs the
state’s economic development programs.
She said she first met Cuomo in person at an event at a Madison Square Garden in January 2016.
“My boss soon informed me that the Governor had a ‘crush’ on me,” Boylan said. “It was an uncomfortable but all-too-familiar feeling: the struggle to be taken seriously by a powerful man who tied my worth to my body and my appearance.”
During an October 2017 jet flight, Boylan said, Cuomo quipped “let’s play strip poker” as they sat with a press aide and a state trooper.
She said she brushed it off with a joke, sarcastically saying, “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” but privately found the comment upsetting.
The governor’s office confirmed that Boylan flew with the governor on four occasions in October2017,butreleasedastatement from four people who were on those flights who said the joke about strip poker never happened.
WASHINGTON — Republican leaders in the House and Senate say a proposed plan for an independent commission to study the Capitol insurrection is overly tilted toward Democrats, arguing that the panel should have an even party split like the one formed to study the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday that a legitimate commission would be made up of an equal number of Republicans and Democrats. A draft proposed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would create an 11-member commission with four Republicans and seven Democrats, three of whom would be chosen by President Joe Biden, according to one of multiple aides who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the details under negotiation.
Pelosi has not commented on the draft or said why there should be more Democratic members. Last week, she said the commission must be “strongly bipartisan” and have the power to subpoena witnesses. But on Wednesday, House Democratic Conference Chair Hakeem Jeffries said McCarthy hasn’t operated in good faith and “set a bad tone” when he supported former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn Biden’s election victory.
The partisan bickering before the commission gets off the
ground is raising questions about whether lawmakers can coalesce around a thorough review of the Jan. 6 riot that interrupted the presidential electoral count and led to five deaths. Both parties support creating an independent investigation, but much of the consensus ends there, with Democrats demanding accountability for lawmakers who amplified Trump’s falsehoods about the election.
The vast majority of Republicans stood by Trump as Democrats impeached him for telling his supporters to “fight like hell”
to overturn his election defeat as Congress counted votes. And it is an open question whether the commission will be authorized to investigate Trump’s actions.
Republicans have suggested an evenly divided 10-member panel and have also objected to some of the rationale for forming the commission. A second aide said that Pelosi’s proposal would give broad latitude to the commission to investigate what led to the effort to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power and that it quotes FBI and intelligence assessments that show some of
the violence was motivated by racism and false narratives about the election.
McConnell said on the Senate floor that the language is “artificial cherry picking” and that the commission should either look narrowly at the specific security failures in the Capitol or “potentially do something broader to analyze the full scope of political violence here in our country.”
He said an inquiry “with a hardwired partisan slant would never be legitimate in the eyes of the American people.”
McCarthy pointed to the Sept.
11 commission as the model. “It’s only Speaker Pelosi who’s trying to make this thing partisan,” he said.
That commission in 2004 made 41 recommendations to prevent another terrorist attack, covering tighter domestic security, the reform of intelligence gathering and new foreign policy directions. Several of them were later passed by Congress and signed by then-President George W. Bush.
The two chairs of that panel, former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean and former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton, wrote a letter to congressional leaders and Biden after the Jan. 6 attack recommending they set up a similar commission to investigate and “establish a single narrative and set of facts to identify how the Capitol was left vulnerable, as well as corrective actions to make the institution safe again.”
In their letter, Hamilton, a Democrat, and Kean, a Republican, said that a “strong, resilient, and responsive Congress is essential for our system of government to work,” and that the commission was essential so that the American people learn the truth of what happened.
But politics have changed in the intervening 17 years, and Democrats and Republicans rarely agree on anything — including, in some cases, basic facts. Some of Trump’s most ardent supporters in Congress, and many of their constituents, still question whether Biden really won the election, even though Trump’s false allegations of widespread fraud have been rejected by election officials in both parties, his own attorney general and courts up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jeffries charged Wednesday that McCarthy had given “aid and comfort” to the insurrectionists by voting for GOP challenges to the election the evening of Jan. 6, when Congress reconvened after the riot to finish counting the electoral votes and certify Biden’s win. The rioters had been calling for Congress to “stop the steal” and even called for the death of then-Vice President Mike Pence, who was presiding over the count and ultimately announced the results of his own defeat.
Democrats now control both chambers, and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has said he also supports a commission.
One of the fiercest food-world fights in recent years has featured fast-food chains vying for supremacy over who can most successfully serve up a fried breast of chicken between two pieces of bread.
This week, the battle has heated up again as McDonald’s enters the fray with its own take on the crispy chicken sandwich.
On Wednesday, McDonald’s released three versions: original, spicy and deluxe, with lettuce and tomato.
McDonald’s knows burgers.
Its Big Mac is recognized all around the globe. But the Golden Arches is years behind its peers in developing a competitive chicken sandwich, much to the frustration of many of its franchise owners.
In recent years, American fastfood customers have embraced chicken and, in particular, so-called Southern-style chicken sandwiches.
A bevy of fast-food restaurants — Wendy’s, Burger King, Shake Shack — have jumped on the crispy chicken-sandwich bandwagon, releasing or making plans to release new chicken sandwiches.
Even Taco Bell is riding the wave, debuting a combination chicken sandwich/taco next month in limited markets.
For years, the leader of the category was Chick-fil-A, which created its original chicken sandwich — with two pickles and a toasted, buttered bun — in 1964.
But the chicken-sandwich battle really started in the summer of 2019, when Popeyes introduced its own fried-chicken sandwich (brioche bun, with pickles). Within days, Popeyes locations around the country saw lines stretched out their doors, and the sandwich became a viral knockout. It became so popular that the chain sold out of months of supply within two weeks and had to pull the sandwich from its menu for more than two months to secure ingredients and negotiate with its suppliers.
McDonald’s journey into chicken sandwiches dates to 2008, when it introduced the Southern Style Chicken Sandwich. That was a fried chicken fillet served on a hamburger bun with pickles, an offering some said looked suspiciously like Chick-fil-A’s signature sandwich. The McDonald’s version was discontinued in 2015.
Aboutfouryearsago,executives at McDonald’s decided it was time to try again.
Using the Southern Style Chicken sandwich as a starting point, chefs and a handful of franchise owners began weekly visits to the company’s kitchens in Chicago to meet with suppliers.
First came the chicken breast.
“We looked at the Southern Chicken sandwich and knew it had to be modernized, reimagined from how it was,” said John Link, who began working at McDonald’s 50 years ago when he was 15 and today owns 13 restaurants in the Hickory, North Carolina, area.
Ultimately, McDonald’s decided, for the first time, to use a potato roll for one of its sandwiches. The roll is toasted with a creamy butter, dispensed through new warmers that are being installed in the restaurants.
“It’s sweet and buttery, a really nice complement to the savory of the chicken,” said Linda VanGosen, head of U.S. menu strategy at McDonald’s.
Last, but not least, came the two pickles. The crinkle-cut pickle McDonald’s uses means more crunch and more pickle flavor on the sandwich, Link explained.
Instead of the cardboard boxes that McDonald’s uses for most of its sandwiches, the original Crispy Chicken sandwich and the spicy version will be served in a foil bag.