New York | One of eleven women named in an independent investigation accusing New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment has filed a complaint, the first to come to light since the explosive report came out on Tuesday, has t – we learned from the media and the authorities.
• Read also: More and more alone, the governor of New York still deaf to calls to resign
• Read also: Cuomo leaves Democrats no choice
For their part, the governor’s lawyers took the floor to accuse investigators commissioned by New York State Attorney General Letitia James of bias and to seek to demonstrate that certain testimonies were false.
“A complaint was filed yesterday” (Thursday), a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office in Albany County, the state capital, confirmed to AFP on Friday, without further details.
According to several American media, the complaint comes from a woman, anonymized under the name “executive assistant # 1” in the report. This assistant in Andrew Cuomo’s team has deplored several inappropriate and indecent gestures since the end of 2019 on the part of the governor, who has refuted the accusations.
The complaint paves the way for possible lawsuits for the governor, whom many Democratic allies, down to President Joe Biden, have called for to step down, and who is also the subject of proceedings in the State Parliament of New York may lead to his dismissal.
“Pre-constructed story”
Governor of New York State since 2011, re-elected in 2014 and 2018, Andrew Cuomo, 63, had become a national star at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in the spring of 2020, thanks to his daily television spots, seen as rational and reassuring in the midst of a crisis.
According to the report released Tuesday, the assistant who lodged a complaint deplored “close and intimate hugs” from the governor but she also accuses him of having “grabbed her buttocks” several times, during hugs. or in a selfie, and, once again in November 2020, at the governor’s official residence in Albany, for “putting her hand under her blouse and touching her breast.”
“I have never touched someone inappropriately or made inappropriate sexual advances,” Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday, in a statement filmed from his office.
“This investigation was conducted in such a way as to support a pre-constructed story,” continued one of his lawyers, Rita Glavin, on Friday afternoon. She deplored in particular that the governor did not have access before its release to the 168-page report to give his official version of the facts, nor to the full verbatims of the testimonies. Andrew Cuomo had been heard at length by investigators in July.
The lawyer also broadcast a story of the day of November 16, 2020, in particular from emails, supposed to show that the complainant exchanged with her colleagues in a light tone that day.
The report is the result of an investigation by the office of New York State Attorney General Letitia James.
“It was the governor himself who asked that Attorney General James supervise an independent investigation,” retorted to Andrew Cuomo’s lawyers one of Letitia James’ advisers, Fabien Levy, in a statement. promising verbatim testimonials. “There are eleven women whose accounts have been corroborated by mountains of evidence,” he added.
If this procedure was not intended to lead to an indictment of Andrew Cuomo, several prosecutors in the State of New York have since assured that they had opened investigations.
–
