Gov. Cuomo Resigns After Sexual Harassment Probe; Critic Says He Is “Still Gaslighting New Yorkers”
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
AUGUST 11, 2021
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/8/11/ ... esignation
GUESTS
Yuh-Line Niou: Democratic member of the New York State Assembly.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced his resignation, effective August 24, after a week of intense pressure from fellow Democrats for him to step down. Cuomo, who has been in office since 2011, had few allies left after an investigation by New York’s attorney general found he had sexually harassed at least 11 women — allegations he continues to deny. “Governor Cuomo is still gaslighting New Yorkers,” says Yuh-Line Niou, a member of the New York State Assembly representing Manhattan, who says Cuomo must still be impeached. “Impeachment means that New York will not be paying Andrew Cuomo’s pension for the rest of his life. Impeachment means that Governor Cuomo will not be able to run for office again.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced he’s resigning, following the recent release of a devastating report from the New York Attorney General’s Office, which found the three-term Democrat sexually harassed at least 11 women in violation of state and federal law. New York Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul will take over in two weeks, becoming New York’s first woman governor. Cuomo made the announcement Tuesday afternoon as state lawmakers were moving forward on starting impeachment proceedings against him.
GOV. ANDREW CUOMO: “New York tough” means New York loving. And I love New York. And I love you. And everything I have ever done has been motivated by that love. And I would never want to be unhelpful in any way. And I think that given the circumstances, the best way I can help now is if I step aside and let government get back to governing. And therefore, that’s what I’ll do.
AMY GOODMAN: During his resignation speech, Governor Cuomo denied all the allegations and continued to defend his actions.
GOV. ANDREW CUOMO: I take full responsibility for my actions. I have been too familiar with people. My sense of humor can be insensitive and off-putting. I do hug and kiss people casually, women and men. I have done it all my life. It’s who I’ve been since I can remember. In my mind, I’ve never crossed the line with anyone. But I didn’t realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn. There are generational and cultural shifts that I just didn’t fully appreciate. And I should have. No excuses.
AMY GOODMAN: One of Cuomo’s accusers, former aide Lindsey Boylan, responded by saying, quote, “From the beginning, I simply asked that the Governor stop his abusive behavior. It became abundantly clear he was unable to do that, instead attacking and blaming victims until the end. It is a tragedy that so many stood by and watched these abuses happen,” she said.
Governor Cuomo had faced mounting calls to resign for months over the sexual harassment allegations, as well as his cover-up of thousands of COVID-19 deaths in New York nursing homes.
We’re joined now by two guests. Zephyr Teachout is a professor of law at Fordham University who ran against Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 2014. We are also joined by Democratic Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, who first called on Cuomo to resign in February. She was one of the first.
Democratic Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou, thanks for joining us once again on Democracy Now! Respond to Governor Cuomo’s resignation yesterday. And now, again, this doesn’t go into effect — this has been sort of unexplained, why he wants two weeks, but for 14 days.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER YUH-LINE NIOU: Yeah, well, I mean, I don’t believe that it’s a shock to us that he also still wants to control the narrative, control the timeline, control everything. Governor Cuomo is still gaslighting New Yorkers. He had his lawyer — that the state is actually paying for — come out and defend him again on a state platform, basically telling these women that they were imagining it, that they were not harmed by the governor. And then he continued to say things, just like the clip that you played, that “I didn’t know where the line had — that the line had been redrawn,” and, you know, all of these different things that continued to basically dismiss the fact that women do know when men are mistreating them.
And then, at the end, he addressed the Legislature and tried to say that it would be costly to the state and painful for the state to proceed with impeachment proceedings, because he doesn’t want us to actually hold him accountable. Governor Cuomo basically told New Yorkers in his remarks that in exchange for resigning, he’d like the Assembly to not impeach him and not investigate his conduct any further. This is gaslighting all New Yorkers. Impeaching him isn’t what is costly; actually, not impeaching him is what is costly.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Assemblywoman, in terms of this issue of what happens now with the impeachment proceedings, because there has been some speculation that the governor and some of his remaining few supporters would like to see him possibly have a comeback later, and if he was impeached, obviously, he could not come back to run for office again, so I’m wondering what your sense is in terms of whether the Assembly will move forward, now that he’s resigned.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER YUH-LINE NIOU: What you’re saying is exactly right. Impeachment must continue. And we must remember that the governor’s abuse of power extends far beyond just the women that, you know, he actually harassed and harmed and victimized. And it also extends to the millions that he made on the book deal while abusing his staff and misusing his staff. It extends to the victims of COVID-19 who passed away in nursing homes and whose numbers and whose deaths he erased, in their numbers, and hid from the Legislature, right? This is a pattern. This is serial abuse.
Impeachment means that New York will not be paying Andrew Cuomo’s pension for the rest of his life. Impeachment means that Governor Cuomo will not be able to run for office again by claiming to be the victim, while he’s also gaslighting and harming further the actual victims that he caused harm to. Impeachment means that we are then securing justice for folks who actually came forward, were brave enough to speak up about their experience, and also the folks who were not yet able to come forward, who we know there are many.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you comment on this irony of Governor Cuomo, while he was in office, supposedly championing the rights of women and now to being forced to resign in disgrace because of his treatment of women?
ASSEMBLYMEMBER YUH-LINE NIOU: Well, I mean, it’s interesting that you actually commented on that, because just because Governor Cuomo is retiring, it doesn’t actually mean that the toxic culture of abuse and misogyny in which he operated and thrived in is actually going away. We want to actively work to change that. We have to pass legislation that will make Albany a safe and harassment-free workplace. Landmark legislation was passed in 2019 to protect workers in the workplace from sexual harassment, but we, very ironically, exempted our own staff, our own folks, from being protected. I actually have a bill, with Senator Andrew Gounardes, to close that loophole.
AMY GOODMAN: How is that possible that you exempted yourselves?
ASSEMBLYMEMBER YUH-LINE NIOU: Well, I believe that that was a clause or an exemption that the executive wanted.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, as Governor Cuomo continually says, “I did this to everyone. It’s just that mores are changing now, and I wasn’t up on the times,” I wanted to go to Governor Cuomo’s former executive assistant. In the report, she was known as “Executive Assistant Number One.” But this past week, she came out, named herself and filed a criminal complaint — her name is Brittany Commisso — accusing Cuomo of groping her, kissing her against her will, verbally harassing her. This is Commisso speaking on CBS about one of the incidents that occurred at Cuomo’s Executive Mansion.
BRITTANY COMMISSO: So, he gets up, and he goes to give me a hug. And I could tell, immediately when he hugged me, it was in the — probably the most sexually aggressive manner than any of the other hugs that he had given me. It was then that I said, you know, “Governor” — you know, my words were, “You’re going to get us in trouble.” And I thought to myself that probably wasn’t the best thing to say, but at that time I was so afraid that one of the mansion staff, that they were going to come up and see this and think, “Oh, you know, is that when she comes here for?” And that’s not what I came there for, and that’s not who I am. And I was terrified of that.
And when I said that, he walked over, shut the door, so hard, to the point where I thought, for sure, someone downstairs must think — they must think, if they heard that, “What is going on?” — came back to me, and that’s when he put his hand up my blouse and cupped my breast over my bra. I exactly remember looking down, seeing his hand, which is a large hand, thinking to myself, “Oh my god, this is happening.” It happened so quick. He didn’t say anything. When I stopped it, he just pulled away and walked away.
AMY GOODMAN: Again, that is the Executive Assistant Number One. She is naming herself, Brittany Commisso, filing a criminal complaint accusing Cuomo of groping her. Unclear if other criminal complaints will be filed. A number of local DAs, from Albany to New York City, have asked for the evidence behind the attorney general’s report. And this could continue at that level, on a criminal level. Yuh-Line, state Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou, you yourself are a sexual assault survivor. You have championed the legislation that ultimately Governor Cuomo has signed off on. Can you tell us whether he will be impeached, whether or not he leaves, as impeachment proceedings are continuing in the Assembly now?
ASSEMBLYMEMBER YUH-LINE NIOU: I mean, you mentioned, you know, the Child Victims Act, which is about child survivors of the childhood sexual assaults, etc., that we actually passed. But we have not passed the Adult Survivors Act, which is actually very important in this case.
And I just wanted to note that if you are a survivor of sexual assault, it doesn’t matter if you had to laugh it off, go to a dance party or drink until you made yourself sick or make a joke or even have sex or forget or just read a book or take a shower, or whatever that you have to do to survive something like that, because the way that Governor Cuomo’s lawyer addressed that situation was just gaslighting and very harmful, talking about how Brittany actually got up and ate cheese and crackers and made jokes with her colleagues. And I just wanted to say that there are lots of different ways for survivors to cope and to survive after something violating, and it’s a really big deal that they just got through it. And I think that it’s a really big deal to acknowledge that.
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“A Petty Tyrant with Too Much Power”: Former Cuomo Rival Zephyr Teachout Responds to Resignation
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
AUGUST 11, 2021
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/8/11/ ... r_teachout
GUESTS
Zephyr Teachout: professor of law at Fordham University and former candidate for the Democratic nomination for New York governor.
Law professor Zephyr Teachout, who challenged Cuomo for the New York Democratic nomination for governor in 2014, describes Cuomo as “extraordinarily vengeful” and applauds the bravery of the women who spoke up about his behavior. “He never hesitated to use the power of the state, state resources, to serve his own ends,” says Teachout.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I’d also like to bring into the conversation Zephyr Teachout, professor of law at Fordham University. You were a candidate for governor in 2014 against Andrew Cuomo. And I’m wondering, one, your reaction to what’s happened in the last few weeks, and also to the governor’s resignation, and also how the governor dealt with you in your campaign.
ZEPHYR TEACHOUT: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on. And I do want to take the moment to thank Assemblywoman Niou for her extraordinary leadership, because one thing that has not gotten enough attention in the last 24 hours, since Cuomo has resigned, is something that all New York politicians and leaders know, which is that he is extraordinary — extraordinarily vengeful and will destroy people’s careers, will go out of his way to make sure that those who speak up against him are crushed and vanished. And Assemblywoman Niou, as well as the extraordinarily brave survivors, who should never have been in the position they were in, their speaking up has been an incredible service for all New Yorkers, and it has been with extraordinary bravery, because they are not wrong to be scared of Cuomo’s revenge.
When I ran against Andrew Cuomo, just as one small example of hundreds of such examples, two — a few organizations supported me, including the New York chapter of the National Organization of Women and the Public Employees Federation. Cuomo threatened to destroy the leaders of those organizations. And after my race, after I got about 34% of the vote with their support, both of those leaders were gone. He made sure they no longer could keep their leadership position. So, when he threatens, he threatens with the full power — threatened — I’m not used to the past tense yet, and we can’t wait for those 14 days, for the past tense — with the full power of the state resources behind him.
So, as you hear these stories of these survivors and the extraordinary report by Attorney General Tish James, which interviewed over 170 witnesses and looked at over 50,000 documents, remember, it is not just that he was doing these sort of gross abuses and assaults. There is no time at which there was a cultural line where it was OK to grope, proposition your employees. He was doing it not — with this deep threat of state power behind him, and he never hesitated to use the power of the state, state resources, to serve his own ends.
So, my feeling yesterday was one of extraordinary relief for the state of New York, which has crumbling infrastructure, some of the highest inequality in the nation, and feeling of relief that we might finally have a government worthy of its people, and extraordinary gratitude to those who dare to speak up against a petty tyrant with too much power.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I’m wondering if you could also talk about the general situation that continues to exist in Albany and in many state capitals across the country, not only of the harassment of women — we’ve seen it over and over again, not just with governors, but also with elected assemblymen and senators and their staffs — and the fact that most of the state capitals have very little press coverage anymore to, somehow or other, hold people accountable. I’m wondering: Do you expect that there’s going to be any significant change in the culture of this corruption at the state government level?
ZEPHYR TEACHOUT: We are at that moment of significant change in New York. And this is after decades upon decades of a old boys’ club that covers up its own, both in terms of sexual harassment, sexual assault and corruption. And these two are deeply intertwined. There’s an abuse of power that connects these two.
I think it’s important to understand, as Assemblywoman Niou was mentioning, that Andrew Cuomo not only used this powerful position to abuse women, but also used it to retaliate against them and also used his staff to cover up nursing home deaths, lying about the number of people who had died in nursing homes, and then lying about the reason he lied, so that he could make millions in a book deal and do a victory lap and look like the hero, while people were suffering. He epitomizes the connection between abusive power of toxic masculinity and the abuse of power in corruption.
So, what is changing in New York? Which relates to why Andrew Cuomo resigned. He did not resign in a fit of love, as he described yesterday. Those of us who watched him know that this is a man who rules entirely by fear and power, not love. He resigned because he could count the numbers, and for the first time he knew that he would be impeached, he would be convicted, and he would no longer be able to run for office in the future.
Now, why did that happen? It happened because of local, grassroots organizing that elected a new generation of lawmakers, lawmakers who, despite the threats to their career, to their constituents — because this is what Andrew Cuomo does, is he threatens to take away money from people’s local needs, so lawmakers are afraid to speak up not only for how he will smear them in the press, but also for the effects on his constituents. We have a new generation of lawmakers rising up. And it is so important to support them, to support the legislation that Assemblywoman Niou talked about, the Adult Survivors Act, among others, and to take this moment and say we don’t want to replace Andrew Cuomo with somebody else who is backed by big real estate money, big healthcare money, and holds all the strings of powers in his or her hands. We need a new generation of small-D democratic leadership, where we see the Legislature leading, where the executive branch doesn’t collect power and dole it out as favors and punishments.
So it’s a major moment for New York state, but I would argue it’s a major moment for the Democratic Party nationally. We should be proud that Democrats, looking at somebody who had a “D” next to their name — and Andrew Cuomo has always been a bit of a Ronald Reagan-Margaret Thatcher Democrat; if his name wasn’t Cuomo, you might think he was a Republican — but that Democrats had the moral courage to say, “No. Yes, he’s a Democrat, but what he has done is beyond the pale.” And that is something we should be proud of and make sure that we do in other states, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Zephyr Teachout, and we just have a minute, ironically, the resignation of Governor Cuomo is paving the way for the first woman New York governor —
ZEPHYR TEACHOUT: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: — Kathy Hochul —
ZEPHYR TEACHOUT: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: — who became a congressmember after winning a special election, because the previous congressmember was forced to resign because of sexual malfeasance. But what do you know of soon-to-be Governor Hochul?
ZEPHYR TEACHOUT: Well, when she was — she’s been sort of at Andrew Cuomo’s side. She has been a lieutenant governor who largely serves as a spokesperson, not a lieutenant governor who has been a public critic. But before that, what we know is that she was fairly conservative. She was a bank lobbyist before she became lieutenant governor. When I ran in 2014, my running mate was Tim Wu, who ran for lieutenant governor and pointed out that she was opposed to driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants at the time. She has changed her position on that. There is bit of a blank slate question here. It’s been a long time since she has run on her own platform.
But I think what is critical here is that — you know, Kathy Hochul and I don’t share the same politics, but I believe Kathy Hochul will not abuse her position of power. I believe Kathy Hochul will not use threats, abuse her staffers, and that we need to take this moment to transform the deeply corrupt and abusive and toxic culture of Albany. And I will be pushing her to be a — lead as a progressive governor.
But again, and I said this before, this is the moment for the state Legislature in New York. It is a moment to stop looking at individual leaders and look at the small-D democratic moment, so we can have leaders like Assemblywoman Niou, who has been so brave and leading on legislation that would allow New York to thrive, with funding for schools and infrastructures, for building New York. And that requires both a change in our understanding of what is possible in New York, but also a wholehearted rejection of granting anyone so much power to be so abusive as Andrew Cuomo had.
AMY GOODMAN: Zephyr Teachout, we want to thank you for being with us, professor of law at Fordham University. In 2014, she ran for the Democratic Party nomination for New York governor against the incumbent, Andrew Cuomo. And also thank you to Democratic Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou.