Andrew cuomo

Eva Longoria. Shonda Rhimes. Jurnee Smollett. Ashley Judd. Those names might sound like the makings of a new Netflix original drama, but they're actually just a few of the Time's Up board members who have agreed to resign in the aftermath of the Gov. Andrew Cuomo sexual harassment scandal. Time's Up, a charity organization founded on the back of the #MeToo movement ostensibly to assist women in fighting sexual harassment in the workplace, wound up in the Cuomo story for all the wrong reasons. Roberta Kaplan, the organization's board chair and co-founder of its legal defense fund, resigned last month after the New York attorney general's report on Cuomo's behavior revealed that Kaplan had reviewed a draft op-ed discrediting one of Cuomo's accusers.

During the presidential election, there was a lot of talk about unifying the country. Seven months later and the restoration of norms and return of civility remain on hold. Bringing people together in today’s polarized world is a tough task. It requires a certain je ne sais quoi. However, certain rare politicians can bridge the partisan divide. One such statesman is Warren Wilhelm Jr, who trades under the stage name Bill de Blasio. Through his abysmal governing of New York City over the past eight years, the New York mayor has managed to unite Democrats and Republicans alike. As Michael Scott noted in The Office, ‘Sometimes what brings the kids together is hating the lunch lady.

I’m not going to lie, the past few weeks seeing the spectacular fall of former disgraced governor Andrew Cuomo after being the toast of the town last year has been somewhat satisfying. This time last year, he was writing his acceptance speech to receive his Emmy Award for his amazing performance playing a leader in the middle of a once in a lifetime pandemic. Celebrities like Billy Crystal, Robert De Niro, Whoopi Goldberg and Rosie Perez fawned over their MVP: ‘Most Valuable Politician’. It is quite something to revisit some of their revolting speeches.

The announcement that Andrew Cuomo will resign in two weeks follows the total collapse of his political support among Democrats in New York State and Washington. His advisers told him impeachment was now certain, and he resigned just ahead of the inevitable, as President Nixon did when he was given the same message by his erstwhile congressional supporters. The headlight of that oncoming train has been visible in Albany for months. The crash became certain when Attorney General Letitia James of New York issued her damning report on Cuomo’s behavior, buttressed by testimony from 11 accusers. After James’s report and press conference, all the top Democrats in the state and country began calling on Cuomo to resign. The major papers, which always support Democrats, did the same.

Most people told me it would never happen. And so I prepared myself that after almost a year and a half of shouting for answers and accountability from New York’s 56th governor, I would probably never see the day Andrew Mark Cuomo would step down, or be forced to leave office. But, now, it is finally happening. The headlines speak of Andrew Cuomo’s career coming to an end. On Tuesday, Attorney General Letitia James’s office released the results of an extensive investigation into allegations of sexual harassment against Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The results were devastating and disgusting.

Today New York attorney general Leticia James announced the findings of a five-month investigation into claims that Gov. Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women. The findings? Cuomo’s conduct was far worse than previously suggested in public allegations and the media. He sexually harassed, groped and retaliated against numerous women — then his office tried to cover it up. The AG's 168-page report tells of how Cuomo was found to have grabbed a staffer’s breast while giving her a hug, groped multiple women’s butts and even dragged his hand across the stomach and back of a female member of his security detail.

I didn’t meet Davell Gardner Jr. Yet his photo — and the bubbly personality it captures — will forever remain etched in my mind. The picture shows a baby with fuzzy curls; trusting, happy eyes; a beaming, gap-toothed smile. His chubby, loaf-like baby hands remind me of my own kids’ hands, which I often can’t help kissing or blowing raspberries on. There he is, crawling on his dad’s belly, enjoying one of the last playtimes of his life. On July 12 last year, a convoy of three cars pulled up in front of a residential building on Pulaski Street, in Brooklyn. Suspecting potential gang activity, officers in an NYPD cruiser flashed their lights, and one of the cars, a Volkswagen Jetta, sped away. The cops gave chase, exactly as the gangsters had hoped they would.

Andrew Cuomo is the most shamelessly transparent governor in America. And why shouldn’t he be? The man has never been subtle about who he is — and up until now, it has always worked for him. For the duration of his career in politics, the scion of former New York governor Mario Cuomo was the media’s darling. But times change faster than Dr Fauci’s views on mask wearing. Now Gov. Cuomo finds himself frequently described in the press as a man with ‘mushrooming scandals’. Going from ‘America’s Boyfriend’, as Marie Claire’s Michelle Collins dubbed him, to ‘America’s Delusional and Unstable Ex’ can’t be an easy transition. This has become abundantly clear from Cuomo’s unhinged press conferences.

Several weeks back, I went for a run in the Del Ray neighborhood of Alexandria in Northern Virginia. It’s the sort of place where ‘Black Lives Matter’ signs cry out of security-alarmed windows and the dollar-to-fried-pickle exchange rate is instantly available upon request. I was hoofing it along when suddenly a guy leaned out of nowhere and shouted, ‘Why don’t you wear a mask if you’re going to jog on the sidewalk?!’ I told him to screw off and ran on, but my first reaction was one of pity. In Northern Virginia, the danger of getting mown down by a waif on a Lime scooter is real and ever-present; maybe he was just on edge. It was only later that I realized he may as well have just wished me dead — people have asphyxiated from wearing masks while exercising.

Andrew Cuomo could murder thousands of senior citizens in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose a single supporter. Earlier this week the New York governor got up in front of local TV cameras for the first time in several months since his non-apology apology to respond to more allegations of sexual harassment. (The national media has apparently checked out.) Instead of feigning regret or acting contrite, Cuomo did a complete 180, saying his accusers were ‘jealous’ and digging in by defiantly declaring ‘I didn’t do anything wrong.’ In one sense, it’s all been going wrong for Andrew. There was another damaging report from the New York Times that Cuomo’s top aides concealed more nursing home deaths than previously thought.

For all that has gone wrong in America in the last year, the main thing that has gone right is our system of 50 independent states has endured and prospered. The COVID-19 pandemic was a challenge to our federalist system. The impulse in March 2020 was to have all states respond in the same way to the virus. Of course, in a country with large cities and small cities, sprawling suburbs, small towns, extremely rural areas and everything in between, that made little sense. We quickly corrected it and governors took control of COVID-19 policies for their states. The results of that have been astonishing. States that had tight lockdowns, such as New York, New Jersey and Michigan, did not see better outcomes than states which loosened their lockdowns early on.

There are lots of libertarians at the end of a pandemic — and for good reason. For more than a year now Americans have watched the actions of dysfunctional government officials play out like the worst reality show of all time. If the ineptitude wasn’t so infuriating, it might make for entertaining TV. There was the episode when the smug governor who asked his constituents to stay home got caught dining at French Laundry. Or what about the one when the White House coronavirus response coordinator broke her own travel restrictions to winterize her vacation home — and got ratted out by members of her own family? The past 12 months have showcased non-stop hypocrisy from our federal and local officials.

Over the weekend, the two-hundred-and-forty-second woman to accuse Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment came forward. That number is no less true for being inaccurate. It seems you can’t open a newspaper these days without reading about some horrible Cuomo come-on at an Albany Christmas party or a Manhattan cocktail hour. How’s it going for Democrats seeking a left-wing foil to Donald Trump? They seem to have gotten all of the vices with none of the humor. Of course, Cuomo deserves his due process like everyone else. But the accusations do seem credible and certainly fit with his hard-charging bull-in-a-bodega persona. There’s also the matter of the governor’s other scandal, which has been swept under the rug despite it involving the mass death of old people.

New York governor Andrew Cuomo is finally getting his comeuppance. Oddly, however, it’s not for killing thousands of nursing home residents. Instead, the press has decided that the real story is Cuomo being slightly creepy toward to young women. Cuomo's comments to two former aides are icky, no doubt. However, the media has also piled on with other spurious accusations that they insist are proof of a pattern of abusive behavior. In one, a young woman says Cuomo touched the small of her back at a wedding and then grabbed her face and asked if he could kiss her. She is visibly uncomfortable in a photo of the incident, but what attractive woman hasn't had a weird old dude make a poorly strategized advance at an event with alcohol?

Since the beginning of this month, the online political conversation has been abuzz over the incipient #MeTooing of yet another powerful man. It began when Lindsey Boylan, a millennial politician who recently launched a campaign for Manhattan borough president after failing to unseat Rep. Jerrold Nadler in November, began sending pointed tweets about her time as an employee in the New York governor’s office.‘Most toxic team environment?’ Boylan wrote, retweeting a prompt asking users to describe the worst job they’d ever had. ‘Working for @NYGovCuomo.