the new york attorney general receiving
the green light to investigate the
sexual harassment allegations
against governor andrew cuomo as the
wall street journal is reporting that
the cuomo administration has hired a
defense attorney
fox news's brian yennes is in brooklyn
with all the details
brian good evening jackie good evening
we have just received a statement from
25 year old former aide to new york
governor andrew cuomo
charlotte bennett she accused the
governor of sexually harassing her over
the weekend and in this statement
she blasts the governor's apology saying
that he refused to quote take
responsibility for his predatory
behavior
her statement went on to read it took
the governor 24 hours in significant
backlash
to allow for a truly independent
investigation these are not the actions
of someone who simply feels
misunderstood
they are the actions of an individual
who wields his power
to avoid justice now bennett alleges
cuomo made inappropriate sexual comments
asking about her sex life if she had
ever had sex with older men
and she said she understood what the
governor wanted to
she understood that the governor wanted
to have sex with her now cuomo
apologized on sunday night
writing in part at work sometimes i
think i'm being playful and make jokes
that i think are funny
i acknowledge some of the things i have
said have been misinterpreted as an
unwanted flirtation
to the extent anyone felt that way i am
truly sorry about that now new york
attorney general letitia james
has launched an independent
investigation which will be conducted
by an outside law firm or report will be
made
public in a fox news first secretary
hillary clinton released her
first statement regarding these sexual
harassment allegations
saying quote these stories are difficult
to read and the allegations brought
forth raise serious questions
that the women who have come forward and
all new yorkers deserve answers to
i'm glad to see that there will be a
full independent
and thorough investigation and fox news
has confirmed wall street journal
reporting
that the cuomo administration has hired
a white-collar veteran
criminal defense attorney but not for
the sexual harassment allegations but
rather
um i'm sorry to defend the
administration's executive chamber
in regards to its handling of covet 19
in nursing homes remember the governor
facing multiple
uh probes and multiple scandals jackie
brian thank you for that he certainly
has a lot of fires to put out right now
joining me more to talk about it libby
emins the post-millennial senior editor
great to see you libby you know he's not
only dealing with this nursing home
scandal that brian um aptly points out
he's hired defense attorney for
um but now this and so many people are
saying that the apology that brian read
us
was such a backhanded apology not really
acknowledging what's gone on here your
thoughts
yeah i don't think he really
acknowledged it um
to the extent that anything happened
with these women i think he probably
should explain himself and i think
probably uh the administration should do
something about that it's clear that
these women have
uh feelings about what happened there
and probably
that needs to be explored i do think
it's fascinating that it's
so many people in his own party that are
coming after him now
latisha james and ron kim you mentioned
the nursing home scandal
i think that's a far bigger issue right
now facing the administration but
what is fascinating is that it took
these much more personal
allegations for uh
for this to really start blowing up i
think that kind of says something about
the kind of landscape we're living in
when two adult women can say that they
felt uncomfortable at work and that's a
bigger deal than
having under reported some you know 50
of nursing home deaths so that's sort of
surprising but i think it does speak
also to where the democratic party is
right now they're so much more obsessed
with
identity and that kind of political
thing as opposed to actually being held
accountable
for real-world consequences of these
failed pandemic
responses libby when it came to uh
justice kavanaugh
and his situation the democrats were you
know the first ones to come out and say
there needs to be an investigation and
we need to take this seriously and you
can remember it
we're only so slowly starting to hear
for example from hillary clinton and
mayor de blasio was on the radio this
morning
and and he said this obviously he is a
political foe of uh andrew cuomo he said
on top of it he's saying oh i was joking
around
sexual harassment's not funny who the
hell tries to explain that by saying i
was just
joking around so finally you have some
people stepping up to the plate
and saying that he shouldn't be treated
any differently which goes to this theme
of sort of
the hypocrisy that we've talking about
we've been talking about you want to see
people say
no it's got to stop
yeah i think that's right i also think
that um it's interesting because what
a lot of people on the right end up
doing is saying if you're going to have
these rules
uh then you need to play by these rules
and it doesn't seem like the democrats
want to play by their own rules when it
doesn't suit them
there were the allegations against biden
last year of sexual harassment and what
have you
and no one wanted to deal with that
everyone wanted to explain it away and
as soon as it's one of their
favorite people they just you know they
try and
tuck it under the rug i wonder about the
timing you break these uh
you bring up a great point i'm sorry to
interrupt you but i want to listen to
this um sound bite that we have from jen
saki this is the administration's
position on what's happening here in
terms of the path forward
and the outcome of the investigation we
will leave it to the attorney general
and others to conclude that
i mean basically saying i'm washing my
hands of this we don't want to get
involved
we don't want to be in the fray on this
kind of an issue
right and this after having praised him
so extensively
and the man won an emmy for his
performance and he sure did
it's so clear now that that's what that
was
let me just ask you this this final
question um the fact that they're hiring
a criminal defense attorney
um at least with respect to uh the the
nursing home piece of this
um but maybe possibly as this is
blossoming into something else as well
there are a lot of people saying that
there could be criminal liability there
that if they willfully
knowingly withheld pertinent information
and lied to government officials in the
public as well that they should be
liable
in some way i don't i don't know what
the ins and outs are of the
the criminal law in that case but i
believe the administration has basically
admitted to having
covered up the number of people who died
in nursing homes
for political reasons because they
didn't want trump to be able to use that
against the state uh
and it's clear now that the pandemic
response that we had
that killed so many people in nursing
homes where we had such a high death
rate
where you had such high hospitalization
rates and all of that
it needs to be explained against states
that are open and have
way less per capita deaths i mean look
at florida
it's unbelievable they just have normal
life there and we're supposed to believe
that we have to be locked inside
it's like another world i'm told it's
like another world i went out to dinner
here over the weekend and i thought it
was like it felt like the first time i
had been to a restaurant
but everybody else is living life in
different states
um according to different rules and you
know apparently the situation is no more
dire than it is here at the moment
appreciate your time we're going to have
to leave it there libby thank you thank
you