Ex-Aide Details Sexual Harassment Claims Against Andrew Cuomo
A former aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday provided new details to back up her claims of sexual harassment — including an allegation that New York’s top elected official kissed her “on the lips” without warning inside his Manhattan office.
Lindsey Boylan — now a Democratic candidate for Manhattan
borough president — made the stunning allegation in an essay posted on the
Medium website.
Boylan said the incident took place after her 2018 promotion
to be Cuomo’s deputy secretary for economic development and special advisor to
the governor — a job she initially turned down “because I didn’t want to be
near him.”
“We were in his New York City office on Third Avenue,” she
wrote.
As I got up to leave and walk toward an open door, he
stepped in front of me and kissed me on the lips. I was in shock, but I kept
walking.”
Afterward, Boylan wrote, “I came to work nauseous every
day,” then resigned on Sept. 26, 2018.
Boylan also alleges that Cuomo suggested, “Let’s play strip
poker,” while they were “flying home from an October 2017 event in Western New
York on his taxpayer-funded jet.”
Cuomo made the comment as he and Boylan sat facing each
other, with his press aide to her right “and a state trooper behind us,”
according to her essay.
“Governor Andrew Cuomo has created a culture within his
administration where sexual harassment and bullying is so pervasive that it is
not only condoned but expected,” she wrote.
Boylan made her bombshell claims in the wake of The Post’s
recent revelation that top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa privately admitted his
administration hid the total number of nursing home residents killed by
COVID-19 from lawmakers and the public over fear that federal prosecutors would
use it “against us.”
The Post’s scoop has sparked calls for Cuomo to be impeached
and a probe by the FBI and Brooklyn US Attorney’s Office.
In her 1,700-plus-word essay, Boylan said DeRosa and “other
top women” around Cuomo “normalized” his alleged harassment so “that only now
do I realize how insidious his abuse was.”
Boylan also posted screenshots of government emails,
including one in which Cuomo’s executive secretary, Stephanie Benton,
purportedly passed along a message from him that referenced a reported former
girlfriend to show she was his type.
“He said look up Lisa Shields. You could be sisters. Except
you’re the better looking sister,” the Dec. 14, 2016, email said.
Later, Boylan wrote, Cuomo “began calling me ‘Lisa’ in front
of colleagues. It was degrading.”
Another image shows a Nov. 1, 2016, email exchange in which
Cuomo’s chief of staff, Jill DesRosiers, asked Howard Zemsky — then the state’s
economic-development czar — whether Boylan would be attending a meeting the
next day.
Zemsky wrote back, “Ha!” and added that Boylan would be in
Albany “but it will be hard for her to concentrate on the presentations while
worrying about how the Gov’s day is going in Rochester.”
In her essay, Boylan also said that after she first accused
Cuomo of sexual harassment in a series of tweets in December, “two women
reached out to me with their own experiences.”
“One described how she lived in constant fear, scared of
what would happen to her if she rejected the Governor’s advances,” she wrote.
“The other said she was instructed by the Governor to warn
staff members who upset him that their jobs could be at risk. Both told me they
are too afraid to speak out.”
When she initially accused Cuomo, Boylan didn’t provide any
details of his alleged harassment and didn’t respond to repeated requests for
comment.
In a tweet Wednesday, she said, “I never planned to share
the details of my experience working in the Cuomo administration, but I am doing
so now in hopes that it may make it easier for others to speak their own
truth.”
Cuomo personally denied Boylan’s allegations in December.
“It’s not true,” Cuomo said during a news conference a day
after her tweets.
“Look, I fought for and I believe a woman has the right to
come forward and express her opinion and express issues and concerns that she
has. But it’s just not true.”
In a prepared statement issued Wednesday afternoon, Cuomo
press secretary Caitlin Girouard said, “As we said before, Ms. Boylan’s claims
of inappropriate behavior are quite simply false.”
Girouard also released a joint statement from four current
and former aides –John Maggiore, Howard Zemsky, Dani Lever and Abbey Fashouer
Collins — who she said joined Cuomo for the Oct. 2017 flights on which Boylan
was also a passenger.
“We were on each of these October flights and this
conversation did not happen,” the statement said.
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