Prosecutor Won’t Charge Cuomo Over Trooper’s Sexual Harassment Claim – The New York Times
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The acting Nassau County district attorney said the allegations were “credible” and “deeply troubling” but not criminal under New York law.
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Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo will not face criminal charges over a female state trooper’s accusation that he touched her inappropriately when she was protecting him during a 2019 event at Belmont Park racetrack, a Long Island prosecutor said on Thursday.
The prosecutor, Joyce Smith, Nassau County’s acting district attorney, said in a statement that an “exhaustive investigation” into the trooper’s allegations — which first surfaced in a damning report by New York’s attorney general — had found them to be “credible, deeply troubling, but not criminal under New York law.”
A lawyer who has represented the trooper did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the union that represents New York State troopers.
Ms. Smith’s decision was reported earlier by Newsday.
Richard Azzopardi, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, said in a statement that Ms. Smith’s decision reinforced the former governor’s longstanding assertion that the report by the attorney general, Letitia James, had simply been a “political springboard” for her own ambitions.
“With each passing day, it becomes more and more clear that the attorney general’s report was the intersection of gross prosecutorial misconduct and an abuse of government power for political purposes,” Mr. Azzopardi said, adding that Ms. James “never presented the evidence to support such claims.”
In late October, Ms. James announced plans to run for governor in 2022, but reversed course just a few weeks later and said she would seek re-election instead. She has consistently said that her inquiry was impartial and based on facts.
The trooper, who has not been publicly identified, was one of 11 women whose accusations of sexual harassment against Mr. Cuomo were documented by investigators working for Ms. James. Their report prompted Mr. Cuomo to resign in August. The State Assembly subsequently issued its own report supporting the attorney general’s findings.
Mr. Cuomo has denied ever acting inappropriately with the women who have accused him of sexual misconduct, saying they had misconstrued behavior on his part that might have been out of step with the times but was not meant to be sexual.
In August, his lawyer apologized to the trooper specifically in a television interview, saying that Mr. Cuomo “never in any way, shape, or form meant to make her feel as if he was touching her in a sexual way.”
The trooper told investigators that Mr. Cuomo had begun to flirt with her shortly after they first met. He later spoke with senior members of his security staff about having her join his protective detail, a coveted assignment. She was subsequently transferred to the detail even though she lacked the experience typically required for such a position, investigators found.
She told investigators that on the day at Belmont Park, in Elmont, N.Y., Mr. Cuomo had run the palm of his left hand across her stomach and that when his hand reached her navel, she pushed it back toward her right hip, where her gun was holstered.
“I felt, like, completely violated because to me, like, that’s between my chest and my privates, which, you know, if he was a little bit north or a little bit south, it’s not good,” she told investigators.
A senior State Police investigator “fully corroborated” the female trooper’s account of the episode, according to the attorney general’s report. He told investigators that he had asked the trooper whether she wanted to take any action and that she had declined for fear of retribution.
The path to resignation. After drawing national praise for his leadership in the early days of the pandemic, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was confronted with several scandals that eventually led to his resignation on Aug. 10, 2021. Here is what to know about his political demise:
Sexual harassment accusations. Multiple women accused Mr. Cuomo of harassment, including groping and lewd remarks. An independent inquiry by the New York State attorney general corroborated the accounts. The investigation also found that he retaliated against at least one woman who made her complaints public.
Nursing home controversy. The Cuomo administration came under fire for undercounting the number of nursing-home deaths caused by Covid-19 in the first half of 2020. The official tally might have undercounted the true toll by as much as 50 percent.
Book deal. The attorney general’s report found that Mr. Cuomo used state workers to produce his pandemic memoir, breaking a promise to the Joint Commission on Public Ethics not to use state resources for its completion. The board subsequently voted to revoke its authorization for the book.
Chris Cuomo’s involvement. Chris Cuomo, a CNN anchor and Andrew Cuomo’s brother, was suspended indefinitely by the network on Nov. 30, after the New York State attorney general released new evidence about his far-reaching efforts to assist his sibling that were in breach of journalistic standards. He was fired on Dec. 4.
The female trooper told the attorney general’s investigators that Mr. Cuomo had acted inappropriately toward her on other occasions, including once suggesting that she go “upstairs” with him for a private tour of the Executive Mansion.
His behavior “came off as creepy,” she said.
Ms. Smith, the Nassau County prosecutor, said in her statement that it was “important to note that our investigation was limited to alleged conduct” at Belmont and that “prosecutors in other jurisdictions continue to review other allegations of misconduct by Mr. Cuomo.”
One of those jurisdictions is Albany County, where Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat who was in his third term when he resigned, is scheduled to be arraigned on Jan. 7 on a criminal complaint charging him with a misdemeanor sex crime.
The complaint, which was filed by the Albany County sheriff, was based on an accusation by a female member of Mr. Cuomo’s staff that he had groped her breast while they were alone in his office at the Executive Mansion. The woman was among those whose allegations were included in the attorney general’s report.
The case was thrown into doubt last month when the Albany County district attorney, David Soares, said the complaint was “potentially defective” and that the sheriff, Craig Apple, had filed it “unilaterally and inexplicably” without consulting Mr. Soares.
At the time, Mr. Soares said his own investigation was continuing. His office did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday about the inquiry’s status.
Representatives for the Oswego and Westchester County district attorneys, who opened investigations into other allegations of sexual misconduct against Mr. Cuomo, also did not respond to requests for comment.
A spokesman for the Manhattan district attorney declined to comment on that office’s investigation.
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