New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is out.
His decision to resign comes a week after the state's attorney general published a
scathing investigation that found Cuomo sexually harassed at least 11
women, including a number of current and former state employees.
Until this morning, the governor had apologized for making any women feel uncomfortable.
But he remained defiant in the face of a pending impeachment inquiry in near
unanimous calls to step down.
While he said today that his instinct was to keep fighting what he called a politically
motivated and unfair investigation, he said doing so would divert focus
from the state's pandemic response.
It is a matter of life and death.
Government operations and wasting energy on distractions
is the last thing that state government should be doing,
and I cannot be the cause of that.
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.
In two weeks, Cuomo will formally leave office.
Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul will succeed him, and she will be the first woman to
lead the Empire State. To discuss all of this, I'm joined by Jodi Kantor of The New
York Times. Her reporting on the Harvey Weinstein saga helped usher in the Metoo
movement. And Karen DeWitt, she's Albany bureau chief for New York State Public
Radio, where she's been covering Governor Cuomo closely.
Thank you both for being here tonight.
I'm Karen DeWitt. To you first. I wonder if you could give us a sense.
Was this a surprise? I mean, I watched the Cuomo lawyer in her presentation
before he made his announcement, and I thought, surely this fight is going to go on.
I heard Cuomo at the initial part of his presentation and I thought he's going to
continue fighting. And then the surprise came.
Were you surprised by this?
You know, actually, I was I mean, we knew that he couldn't win this political fight,
and I think it was in the moment of his speech where he said, well, you all know me as
a fighter. And I thought, oh, there's going to be a pivot here.
And of course, there was. But he essentially said, I can't win this fight.
I really thought that he would wait until the eve of when the assembly was going to draw
up articles of impeachment, which they seemed on that road, and to try to make some
kind of face-Saving deal.
But the Assembly speaker on Monday said there isn't going to be any deals.
Absolutely not. And I think that the governor really at that point saw that there
was no exit and this would be the time, the best time to leave rather than really
face, you know, months and weeks of legal wrangling and just the relentless
negative news cycles.
Jodi Kantor, the argument that the governor made is that this was biased and unfair.
But he also seemed to make this argument that you hear from men of a certain generation,
which is my behavior was misinterpreted.
I didn't mean anything by it. I'm a huggy, kissy, old fashioned
kind of guy. And that surely everyone misread these signals
in this era. Is that argument hold any water in light of these allegations?
Well, to answer your question, I want to turn the page back a few years
to the fall of twenty seventeen after the allegations against Harvey
Weinstein came out, Governor Cuomo made a series of unequivocal statements
over that fall the following months, the following year, about
protecting the women of New York from this kind of behavior.
He said things like the page has turned.
This is no longer acceptable.
We have to work together to do better.
Now, what we now know, thanks to the report, is very significant.
Him how that timing is that not only were we at the kind of high tide
of me, too, but that behind the scenes the governor was allegedly
targeting these women in August of twenty nineteen.
And one day he signed legislation that women had wanted for years, really serious
sexual harassment protections into law.
And the next day, according to the report, he allegedly targeted
the street that continued his targeting of the state trooper.
So I think, you know, I think given that he himself
said that it was a new era, given that he himself appears to have contradicted
the message of leadership he was sending from the highest office in the state, it's very
hard to know what to make of this excuse of, you know, and things have changed.
I'm an old fashioned guy. I should have known better.
And Karen DeWitt, as Judy is pointing out, he was to many progressives
in New York, considered a real ally on marriage equality, on abortion and reproductive
rights. And so was this seeming to to most New Yorkers
to be a revelation that he actually turned out to be allegedly a predator
behind the mansion of the governor's mansion?
Well, you know, I still think it is a little bit generational.
I've certainly talked to older people who say, yeah, I've witnessed events
like this. You know, people behaving this way, it's not right.
But these things happen. It's not a crime.
He said he was sorry. Let's move on.
I don't think, unfortunately, people know all of the details, as Jodie and I do,
of how he seems very hypocritical when he signed a law with strong anti
sexual harassment measures. But, you know, the younger people, they're not putting up
with it. And they're the ones that are going to, you know, lead this country, lead New
York and whose opinion counts.
And they just find it completely unacceptable, the things that were in the attorney
general's report, what he did.
Jodi Kantor, I want to read a little bit of this statement from a lawyer who represents
two of the accusers. This is from Marianne Wang.
She writes in part, My clients feel both vindicated and relieved that
Cuomo will no longer be in a position of power over anyone.
They feel solidarity with all women who continue to be abused by men in power.
At least today, one of them has faced some consequences.
You have reported on sexual assault and sexual harassment cases nationwide,
including from many senior figures and popular figures like this.
Does that statement echo the same thing that you have heard from other victims that
as awful as what they allegedly went through, having the governor resign
and step down is a moment of vindication for them?
Well, what we've seen again and again with me, too, is that accountability
is the engine because women come forward when they are more
likely to come forward, when they believe that something of consequence will happen.
Coming forward is a huge risk. It's really hard.
It's still remarkable to look at this in retrospect and see that this might
have all still stayed secret had Lindsay Boylan, the first accuser, not
tweeted when she did.
And so I think seeing that other people care, that state
lawmakers recognized what was happening, that the attorney general did this
release of a report and that finally Cuomo had to resign means
a lot. And also to your point about the discussion about this behavior and how bad
it was, it's very significant that this scandal is not about
sexual violence. Nobody is saying, God forbid the governor threw me against a wall,
you know, did something that could land him in jail for many years on end, et cetera,
et cetera. It's about sexual harassment and that's about the workplace and it's about
young women in the workplace and the fact that these were, in large part, the governor's
own employees and a state trooper who was sworn to protect him and
whether they could just do their jobs unimpeded into
it.
The governor has said in two weeks he will be formally stepping down as governor,
but he's not out of the woods totally.
Right. There is the possibility of criminal charges being brought, is that right?
Yes, that's right. I mean, just because he's leaving doesn't mean that he can leave this
all behind. The Albany County sheriff is investigating a criminal complaint
brought by Britney Comiso, who appeared on CBS News yesterday and was executive
assistant number one in the report, saying that the governor sexually assaulted her.
At least four other district attorneys around the state are looking at potential criminal
charges. Don't forget, there's also a federal investigation ongoing about how
the governor handled nursing home policy and whether he and his top aides concealed
the true number of residents who died during the pandemic
and also that he's being investigated for his five million dollar book deal,
whether he inappropriately, improperly used staff to help him write and edit
it so there could be criminal charges.
There's probably certainly going to be civil lawsuits.
I believe at least one has already been brought.
So this isn't going to go away for him just because he leaves office.
But I don't think he's going to be the center of attention anymore.
And that takes some of the heat off of him.
Jodi Kantor, last question to you.
We have seen so many of these major figures be snared in these allegations
and have to face the consequences. And we keep saying surely this will be the last one.
Surely people will reckon with their behavior and knock it off.
In essence, do you have any sense that this is the kind of event
that lets people elsewhere in the world recognize that finally we have to stop behaving
like this?
Well, I don't think that I'm not sure how many people really thought
that me too or the Harvey Weinstein story or any of the other big stories
meant the end of this behavior.
In some ways, it means that we're going to find out about it more, because part of what
meta means is that women may be more willing to come forward.
And so, you know, part of what you always have to think
about at a moment like this is what don't we know?
Right. We can address problems that we can't see.
And so the fact that these women can forward successfully, the fact that the governor
resigned may just lead to the next chapter of ME2.
Jodi Kantor and Karen DeWitt, thank you both for joining us.
You're welcome.
Thank you.