A former aide accused New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) of unwanted sexual advances in a blog post published Wednesday.
Lindsey Boylan, the former deputy secretary for economic development and special adviser to Cuomo, said Cuomo repeatedly touched her body, attempted to kiss her on the mouth, invited her to play “strip poker,” and overtly objectified her, documenting her experiences with screenshots of emails and texts in a Medium post.
Boylan alleges that Cuomo’s top female staff members “normalized” the governor’s conduct. In 2018, she says, she began to “speak up” after Cuomo allegedly kissed her without consent, but her superiors “reprimanded” her:
After that, my fears worsened. I came to work nauseous every day. My relationship with his senior team — mostly women — grew hostile after I started speaking up for myself. I was reprimanded and told to get in line by his top aides, but I could no longer ignore it.
On September 26, 2018, I sent a mass email informing staff members of my resignation.
The allegations come as Cuomo’s administration is under investigation by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn following reports that the governor’s top deputy told Democrat lawmakers that officials withheld the nursing home data, admitting that they “froze” due to fears that the figures could “be used against us” in a federal probe.
The New York Post first revealed the damning admission.
In response to the scandal, New York state lawmakers are calling for Cuomo’s emergency powers, granted for coronavirus pandemic, to be stripped from him.
There have been more than 13,000 confirmed and presumed-positive coronavirus deaths of nursing home residents since March 1, 2020, with about 4,091 of those deaths occurring after the resident was transported out of a nursing home, according to an update posted Monday on the health department’s website. There were also about 1,743 such deaths among residents of other adult-care facilities since March, the new data showed, with about 1,493 of those deaths occurring after the resident was transported elsewhere.
The UPI contributed to this report.