Assembly Finds 'Overwhelming Evidence' COVID murderer Cuomo Engaged in Sexual Harassment

[Blue State Grandkids]

Told ya we'd get your ass, motherfucker. You killed grandma and
grandpa.

The findings, released after an eight-month inquiry into former Gov.
Andrew Cuomo, reinforced a damning investigation by the New York
attorney general.

An eight-month investigation by the New York State Assembly found
“overwhelming evidence” that former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo engaged in
sexual harassment while in office, corroborating a damning
investigation by the state attorney general that Mr. Cuomo has
repeatedly tried to discredit.

The investigation also found that Mr. Cuomo abused his power to help
produce what would become a $5.1 million pandemic memoir, providing
new details about just how much of the governor’s staff was used to
help him write, publish and promote his book.

The Assembly inquiry was meant to create a road map for potential
impeachment proceedings against Mr. Cuomo, a three-term governor
whose unrelenting style of leadership engendered varying amounts of
fear, respect and animus. But that prospect was rendered moot after
he resigned in disgrace in August, a week after the release of the
attorney general’s report, which concluded that he had sexually
harassed 11 women.

After Mr. Cuomo stepped down, Carl E. Heastie, the Assembly speaker
and a longtime ally of Mr. Cuomo’s, moved to suspend the Assembly
investigation, contending that lawmakers lacked the constitutional
authority to impeach an official no longer in office.

But Mr. Heastie reversed course after facing an immediate bipartisan
backlash from lawmakers who argued that the Assembly should, at
minimum, finish the taxpayer-funded investigation and make public
its findings.

The result was a 46-page report released on Monday that went beyond
the sexual harassment accusations, further damaging Mr. Cuomo’s
legacy and his continued attempts — fueled by $18 million in unspent
campaign funds — to preserve it.

Thumbnail of page 1
Read the New York State Assembly Report on Andrew Cuomo’s
Impeachment Investigation
A 46-page report on Andrew M. Cuomo released on Monday by the New
York State Assembly Judiciary Committee found “overwhelming evidence
that the former governor engaged in sexual harassment.” It also
found that Mr. Cuomo used state workers to produce his memoir, a
likely violation of state ethics laws.

READ DOCUMENT
Investigators hired by the Assembly Judiciary Committee concluded
that Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, used state workers and other public
resources to write, publish and promote his memoir about his
handling of the coronavirus pandemic, a likely violation of state
ethics laws.

The inquiry also found that Mr. Cuomo “was not fully transparent
regarding the number of nursing home residents who died as a result
of Covid-19.” The Cuomo administration became engulfed in scandal
last year following reports that the state was undercounting
coronavirus deaths in nursing homes, after the governor issued a
directive requiring facilities to accept Covid-19 patients.

The findings of the investigation had led one committee member to
say last week that it would be “reasonable” to infer a connection
between Mr. Cuomo’s $5.1 million book deal and his administration’s
decision to manipulate nursing home death data.

The report makes multiple references to investigators sharing some
of the evidence with law enforcement officials, suggesting that
there may be further legal repercussions for Mr. Cuomo, whose family
— his father, Mario M. Cuomo, was also elected to three terms as
governor — ruled New York for two decades.

Mr. Cuomo has maintained that the attorney general, Letitia James,
who is now running for governor, had compromised her inquiry with
her own political ambitions. He extended that posture on Monday to
include the Assembly investigation.

“The Assembly’s report simply parrots the attorney general’s flawed
report, failing to engage with the many errors and omissions in the
A.G.’s report and her one-sided, biased investigation,” said Rita
Glavin, Mr. Cuomo’s lawyer.

“And, like the A.G., the Assembly refused to provide the former
governor with access to all the evidence, again denying the governor
due process and a meaningful ability to respond,” she continued.
“This is disappointing, but hardly surprising.”

Though Mr. Cuomo’s team has repeatedly sought to discredit the
allegations, the attacks may be even less effective when directed at
the Assembly, whose Democratic leadership had served as a kind of
firewall for Mr. Cuomo.

The Assembly opened its investigation in March as Mr. Cuomo faced a
drumbeat of sexual harassment allegations and calls for his
resignation.

Investigators from Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, the law firm the
Assembly retained to conduct the inquiry, had broad leeway to
scrutinize not just the sexual harassment claims, but potential
misconduct and abuses of power by Mr. Cuomo and his top staff.

They examined the administration’s handling of nursing home data,
the book deal, coronavirus tests administered on a priority basis
for Mr. Cuomo’s family and associates early in the pandemic, when
such tests were hard to come by, and a potential cover-up of safety
issues on the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge.

The investigation involved interviews with 200 witnesses and the
review of 600,000 documents, including recordings, messages and
transcripts, some of which were obtained through subpoenas.

The inquiry unearthed new details on a range of topics, including
the sexual harassment allegations against the governor, many of
which were explored and corroborated in the report by Ms. James’s
office.

While the Assembly report described sexual harassment accusations
from 12 women — including one who had previously gone public, but
was not included in Ms. James’s report — it focused on two of them.

They are an unidentified state trooper and Brittany Commisso, the
former executive assistant to Mr. Cuomo who accused him of groping
her, and whose allegations formed the basis of a criminal complaint
filed against him by the Albany County sheriff’s office.

At issue in that case has been the date on which the encounter
allegedly occurred. The attorney general’s report placed it in mid-
November, while the sheriff’s office and investigators for the
Assembly identified the likely date as Dec. 7, using entry-card
swipes and text messages as evidence to support that timeline.


The report vigorously affirmed Ms. Commisso’s account, while
offering no conclusive evidence that Mr. Cuomo groped her. Instead
it laid out a series of facts it was able to corroborate, including
a text message sent before the alleged incident, card swipes
confirming Ms. Commisso’s actions and the white shirt Ms. Commisso
recalled Mr. Cuomo wearing that day.

The report stated that it had found no “material inconsistencies” in
Ms. Commisso’s account or the accounts of those who corroborated it,
saying that while investigators had found minor discrepancies, they
“are common among witnesses and are often referred to as the
hallmark of truth.”

Understand the Cuomo Impeachment Report
Card 1 of 4
A broad inquiry. The New York State Assembly released the findings
of its eight-month impeachment investigation into former Gov. Andrew
Cuomo’s behavior while in office and potential abuses of power by
Mr. Cuomo and his top staff. Here’s what the report found:

Sexual harassment. The inquiry found “overwhelming evidence” Mr.
Cuomo engaged in sexual harassment, reinforcing a damning report by
the state attorney general. Multiple women have accused Mr. Cuomo of
harassment that included groping, unwanted kisses and lewd remarks.

Nursing home deaths. Mr. Cuomo’s administration “materially
misrepresented” the extent of deaths that occurred in nursing homes
in the early months of the pandemic, according to the report. The
official tally might have undercounted the true toll by as much as
50 percent.

Book deal. The report also found that Mr. Cuomo used state workers
to produce his pandemic memoir, and one assemblyman said that it
would be “reasonable” to infer a connection between the $5.1 million
book deal and the manipulation of nursing home death data.

Richard Azzopardi, a spokesman for the former governor, said that
“the fact that an employee entered and exited the Executive Mansion
as part of her job was never in dispute.”

Another key aspect of the inquiry involves the state’s actions on
nursing homes.

The report did not seek to determine whether the directive from Mr.
Cuomo requiring the facilities to accept Covid-19 patients caused
the outbreaks that made nursing homes so deadly in the spring, and
it found no indication it had.

Instead, it focused on the way in which the administration sought to
deflect from its policy by selectively reporting numbers that
minimized the damage.

Investigators found that the underreporting was the subject of
multiple discussions in the Capitol, including one in which a task
force member asked an administration official, “Do you want me to
admit that we have been reporting deaths incorrectly?”

Mr. Cuomo was directly involved in revising and editing a report
dated July 6, 2020, that downplayed the impact of the disease in
nursing homes “on multiple occasions,” the Assembly report says.

That same day, a Monday, the governor had a meeting with the
publisher Penguin Random House about a potential book, reaching a
multimillion-dollar deal by Friday, July 10.

Also on July 10, Mr. Cuomo requested authorization to write the book
from the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics, asserting that “no
state property, personnel, or other resources” would be used in its
creation. Commission staff approved the request one week later.

But in seeming contrast to that request, the report details multiple
instances of staff involvement in the writing, editing and promotion
of Mr. Cuomo’s book. One senior staff member sent or received 300
emails regarding the book in the second half of last year; another
sent or received more than 1,000.

The report documents how some staffers appear to have taken vacation
or personal time to work on the book project, but concludes that it
was also attended to “during the course of normal work routines.”

One official complained to a colleague that work on the book had
compromised that official’s ability to focus on the coronavirus
crisis.

Investigators concluded that Mr. Cuomo had “utilized the time of
multiple state employees, as well as his own, to further his
personal gain during a global pandemic.”

Last week the state ethics commission retroactively revoked its
authorization of the deal, potentially forcing Mr. Cuomo to
relinquish the money he earned from the project.

Mr. Cuomo has vociferously denied using state resources on the book
and indicated that he would fight the board’s decision in court.

“Staff who volunteered took time off, evidencing that they were
volunteering and not on state time,” Mr. Azzopardi said in a
statement. “Any suggestion to the contrary is Assembly hype.”

Another of Mr. Cuomo’s achievements targeted by the inquiry was the
bridge renamed for his father. As early as 2018, reports that dozens
of steel bolts had broken during construction raised serious
questions about the structural integrity of the bridge, and spurred
an attorney general investigation.

Assembly investigators abandoned that line of inquiry, saying that
the New York State Thruway Authority repeatedly assured the
executive chamber and public that the bridge was safe.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/22/nyregion/cuomo-ny-assembly-
investigation.html

[John Baker]

On Tue, 23 Nov 2021 01:02:29 +0100, Blue State Grandkids
<got...@democrats.org> wrote:

<snip long-winded BS>

And here you see one of the fundamental differences between Democrats
and Republicans. Democrats hold their criminals accountable.
Republicans elect them president.






AA #1898
Giver of No Fucks
Keeper of the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch