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It’s Now Five: Two More Cuomo Accusers Step Forward, Calls for His Resignation Intensify

It’s Now Five: Two More Cuomo Accusers Step Forward, Calls for His Resignation Intensify

“For the good of the state, Governor Cuomo must resign,” New York State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D) said in a statement Sunday just hours after Cuomo again insisted he would not step down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHuvrT-fNoQ

It’s impossible to overstate just how bad things have gotten for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

It started in late January when the state’s Democratic Attorney General Letitia James detailed how nursing home COVID death numbers were higher than the state originally reported. The undercounting, James said in so many words, was due in part to how New York changed how nursing home deaths from the Wuhan coronavirus were calculated.

Another explosive report that hit not long after revolved around the governor’s office admitting they deliberately hid nursing home COVID death data from state lawmakers because they feared an investigation by Trump’s DOJ. Another bombshell report revealed the actual number of COVID-positive patients who were let back into nursing home facilities was 9,056, which was over 40% higher than what Cuomo’s health department had initially reported.

And late last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that “Cuomo’s top advisers successfully pushed state health officials [last summer] to strip a public report of data showing that more nursing-home residents had died of Covid-19 than the administration had acknowledged.”

On top of the reports on the governor’s office deliberately deceiving state lawmakers, the press, and the public on the nursing home death numbers have been the sexual harassment allegations. The combination of both scandals has led to various calls from Democrats for Cuomo to either resign or be censured or impeached. At a press conference last Wednesday, Cuomo said he would not step down.

Investigations into both matters are underway.

As to the sexual harassment allegations, New York State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D) said Thursday that Cuomo should resign if any more accusers stepped forward.

“Any further people coming forward, I think it would be time to resign,” she told a local news outlet.

At the time she made her remarks, the count stood at three. Now the count stands at five:

Two more women came forward Saturday to accuse Gov. Cuomo of sexually harassing behavior, including a former press aide who describes struggling to free herself from his repeated hugs, and a young assistant who now says he left her feeling like “just a skirt.”

Former press aide Karen Hinton endured a “very long, too long, too tight, too intimate” embrace from Cuomo in a dimly lit Los Angeles hotel room in December 2000, she told the Washington Post.

The married Hinton pulled away, but “he pulls me back for another intimate embrace,” she told the paper. “I thought at that moment it could lead to a kiss, it could lead to other things, so I just pull away again, and I leave.”

[…]

The other new accuser, Ana Liss, a policy and operations aide who worked for the governor from 2013 to 2015, said he’d behaved inappropriately while on the job in Albany.

The governor called her “sweetheart” and asked if she had a boyfriend, Liss recalled to the Wall Street Journal.

Liss said Cuomo touched her on her lower back during an event, once kissed her hand and asked her if she was dating.

“It’s not appropriate, really, in any setting,” she told the newspaper. The Post could not immediately reach Liss.

The Washington Post also talked to over 20 former aides to Cuomo, some of who described the working environment with him as toxic:

What Cuomo has touted as an “aggressive” style goes far beyond that behind the scenes, according to more than 20 people who have worked with him from the 1990s to the present. Many former aides and advisers described to The Post a toxic culture in which the governor unleashes searing verbal attacks on subordinates. Some said he seemed to delight in humiliating his employees, particularly in group meetings, and would mock male aides for not being tough enough.

The Post reached out to more than 150 former and current Cuomo staffers, stretching back to his time at HUD in Washington. Most did not respond. Among those who did, the majority spoke on the condition of anonymity, because they said they still fear his wrath and his power to destroy careers.

Some of the former female aides the Post talked to said they didn’t necessarily view Cuomo’s alleged treatment of them as attempts at propositioning them. Instead, they were viewed as sexual “power plays” and attempts to “manipulate and control” the work environment as part of an overall “office culture they believed was degrading to young women.”

On Saturday after the new allegations were reported, Democratic New York State Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou called on Cuomo to either resign or be impeached:

In light of the two new accusers who went on the record to tell their stories, Stewart-Cousins was reminded about her Thursday statement on what Cuomo should do if more accusers spoke out:

This afternoon, 24 hours after Saturday’s stories broke, she called on Cuomo to resign. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D) also issued a statement, stopping just short of saying Cuomo should step down but noting he agreed with Stewart-Cousins’ sentiment on the governor’s inability to lead the state:

Their statements came just hours after Cuomo announced via a conference call that he would sign a bill into law limiting his emergency powers while reiterating with reporters that he would not resign.

— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —

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Comments

Brave Sir Robbin | March 7, 2021 at 4:13 pm

Quick LI Poll:

Would you rather be:
(A) Kissed by Cuomo
(B) Sniffed by Biden
(C) Groped by Biden
(D) Raped by Clinton
(E) Anally swabbed by Xi
(F) All of the above

I suspect the DOJ and DNC are orchestrating this so a nursing home investigation does not go forward that impacts the other blue state governors that allowed nursing homes to take Covid actives back in so that the Medicaid and insurance money spigot remains uninterrupted. That is why the big donations to Democrats by nursing homes and pushes for more Medicaid. It is also interesting that immunity from suit was also arranged in a least a couple states.

Amazing that even after #Metoo was started over four years ago by Dem women a minimum of five women who were abused by Cuomo just now decided to go public.

If I were a cynic I might think the Dems, the NYT, the leftwing media in general, and these women were protecting Cuomo until now. Until someone powerful with a D after their name decided he became a liability and needed to be taken out.

If I were a cynic might conclude #Metoo is little more than a political weapon of convenience selectively used only when politically expedient to advance the agenda of smoky backroom Dem power brokers. Much like BLM. And Antifa.

If I were a cynic I might think the weapon is now being used against Cuomo to distract attention from and cover up the nursing home mass manslaughter Covid deaths he is responsible for. And the similar mass manslaughter policies of a few other Dem governors.

    SpeakUpNow in reply to JHogan. | March 8, 2021 at 11:26 am

    I agree. Let’s see what would get the American public more relied up? Allowing old people to die unnecessarily in nursing homes and then covering up the extent of this tragedy OR having Cuomo kiss a woman’s hand and ask if she had a boyfriend or touching a woman’s back or suggesting they play strip poker. Ummm tough call. I guess the death of thousands of elderly just isn’t enough ammo to get rid of this disgusting individual….

I need to know who at the DNC called in this hit. Clinton, Inc. doesn’t wield this kind of power anymore.

Who was it?

    drsamherman in reply to mrtoad21. | March 7, 2021 at 4:47 pm

    I would venture a guess that AOC’s wing was assigned the job. He was likely becoming a threat to Heel’s Up prospects for 2024.

You know why the calls for resignation are ‘intensifying’?

Because they ALL know that he’s not going to get forcibly removed.

Which is exactly why he’s refusing to resign, and WILL NOT resign.

He knows they don’t have the balls to actually remove him.

Just like the jackass literally posing with the blackface/KKK picture. They KNOW that they just have to stand tall and they’re protected.

“As to the sexual harassment allegations, New York State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D) said Thursday that Cuomo should resign if any more accusers stepped forward.”

I have a sincere question: is there a magic number of accusers that will trigger calls for a Communist officeholder to resign? With William Jefferson Clinton we apparently never reached the magic number.

    drsamherman in reply to Recovering Lutheran. | March 7, 2021 at 6:14 pm

    That (D) in Cuomo’s media citation seems to protect him more than spent uranium armor. If it were (R), they would be screaming for blood now, and then dig him up like Charles II did to Cromwell at the Restoration. I wonder if any Democrats in the NY House of Representatives (or whatever it’s called) have the stones to impeach him.

    henrybowman in reply to Recovering Lutheran. | March 7, 2021 at 7:05 pm

    42.

The Friendly Grizzly | March 7, 2021 at 7:04 pm

Will he have a tragic accident?

Conservative Beaner | March 7, 2021 at 7:08 pm

Kill 15,000 senior citizens by putting Covid patients with seniors, shrugs.

Touch a few women inappropriately, Hang em high.

They don’t have the stones to get rid of him.

    It looks like he’s doing the dig in and make ’em drag him out ploy that worked so successfully for Ralph “blackface/KKK” Northam. He might yet ride this out.

      Sally MJ in reply to Fuzzy Slippers. | March 7, 2021 at 7:42 pm

      Fuzzy,
      Why is the “Reply” button so close to the Thumbs-Down” button? I didn’t mean to give you the thumbs down. I just wanted to reply to you. I think I may have fixed this thumbs-down, by pushing the thumbs-up. I can’t be the only one. Can you guys fix this? I think LI will get more replies. Thanks!

    The media is just as responsible for these deaths as Cuomo because they REFUSED to cover the tragedy or NY care homes put of spite and utter hatred of Trump.

    Had the media actually done is fucking job and been all over this unfolding tragedy lots of lives of the most vulnerable would have been saved.

    However because they were doing everything to gin up hatred of Trump they refused to tell the truth and people were needlessly killed because no one was holding Cuomo accountable.

    Fuck. Them. All.

This sure has the feel of an orchestrated attack on Cuomo rather than an organic appearance of actual victims.

I would propose that headlines for articles like this one be something like this “More Sexual Harassment Charges to Help Cuomo
Coverup for COVID nursing home deaths”

So where is Maisie “she needs to be believed” Hirono in all this? Just because it’s not her state, it’s still about women, right? Yeah, right.

Antifundamentalist | March 8, 2021 at 1:18 pm

Is this an Al Capone kind of thing? No one has the clout or the backbone to prosecute Cuomo for murder, so they are going to go after him for sexual harassment instead, because they think they can get that to stick?

    There would also be collateral damage to a bunch of Democrats if they focus on the COVID story. Lots of Democrats not just New York Democrats.