In a dramatic fall from grace, Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday surrendered to the wave of scandals that have ensnared his administration and left him facing impeachment, announcing that he will resign by the end of the month rather than mount a brutal defense against sexual harassment allegations.
He made the announcement in a 22-minute televised address, during which he once again sought to cast the attorney general’s documentation of sexual harassment and groping as politically motivated.
“I think that given the circumstances, the best way I can help now is if I step aside,” Cuomo said from his Midtown office, telling New Yorkers that he would step down because of the time and toll a previously promised fight to stay in office would take.
Cuomo’s resignation marks an ignominious end to the Democrat’s three-term run as governor, the same number of terms to which his late father — Gov. Mario Cuomo, whom the younger Cuomo idolized — was elected.
By resigning before his term ends, Andrew Cuomo will not match the three full terms as governor that the family patriarch served.
“This is one of the most challenging times for government in a generation,” said the outgoing governor. “Government really needs to function today, government needs to perform. It is a matter of life and death.”
“Wasting energy on distractions is the last thing [the] state government should be doing.”
The impeachment fight, he said, would “consume government.”
“It will cost the taxpayers millions of dollars,” he went on. “It will brutalize people.”
“This situation, by its current trajectory, will generate months of political and legal controversy. That is what we’re going to have. That is how the political wind is blowing.”
Cuomo went 11 minutes into the speech before making the stunning announcement, which made him the third New York governor in a row to be forced out of office amid scandal after David Paterson and Eliot Spitzer.
In the speech, he once again sought to cast allegations of sexual harassment and groping as politically motivated — an argument that has not recently helped the scandal-scarred governor’s political standing.
“I’m a fighter and my instinct is to fight through this controversy because I truly believe it is politically motivated,” Cuomo said. “I believe that it is unfair and it is untruthful and I believe it demonizes behavior that is unsustainable for society.”
Though he said he took “full responsibility” for his actions, Cuomo claimed “generational differences” of which he was previously unaware led him not to realize that his actions are not kosher in the 21st Century.
“In my mind, I’ve never crossed the line with anyone,” he said. “But I didn’t realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn.”
“There are generational and cultural shifts that I just didn’t fully appreciate,” he added. “And I should have – no excuses.”
Cuomo’s resignation will be effective in 14 days, the governor said.
Now, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who served as a member of Congress from 2011 to 2013, will assume the role of governor, becoming the first woman to lead the Empire State.
In a statement, Hochul commended Cuomo’s opting to leave office.
“I agree with Governor Cuomo’s decision to step down. It is the right thing to do and in the best interest of New Yorkers,” said Hochul, 62.
“As someone who has served at all levels of government and is next in the line of succession, I am prepared to lead as New York State’s 57th Governor.”
Cuomo arrived in Manhattan from Albany by helicopter before taking a motorcade to his Midtown offices on Third Avenue, near Grand Central.
Photos showed him accompanied by his daughter, Michaela, and top staffers, including his longtime right hand, Melissa DeRosa, who recently announced her own resignation.
Attorney General Letitia James, whose office’s report delivered a death blow to the governor’s attempt to keep his job, said the resignation ended a “sad chapter” for the Empire State.
“Today closes a sad chapter for all of New York, but it’s an important step towards justice,” James said in a statement.
“The ascension of our Lieutenant Governor, Kathy Hochul, will help New York enter a new day,” she added.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie called Cuomo leaving office “the right decision.”
“This has been a tragic chapter in our state’s history. Governor Cuomo’s resignation is the right decision,” he said in a statement. “The brave women who stepped forward were heard.”
Cuomo’s implosion comes just a year after he soared to national prominence on the strength of his daily coronavirus briefings, which were televised across the country and for some offered an assured counterpoint to the COVID-19 pandemic’s upheaval of day-to-day life.
The governor’s announcement Tuesday was also a stunning reversal from earlier repeated refusals to resign after James’s investigation substantiated or uncovered 11 women sexually harassed or mistreated by the governor.
Calls for his departure came from prominent local members of his own party, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers), Heastie (D-Bronx), and Democratic mayoral nominee Eric Adams.
Governors of neighboring states followed suit.
Even President Joe Biden said, “I think he should resign” in the wake of the attorney general’s probe.
Initially, Cuomo promised to fight, releasing a bizarre, pre-recorded video that included a montage of the governor kissing and touching people.
Meanwhile, his attorneys took to attacking the credibility of several women who accused him and attempted to undercut the report by arguing it was process driven the credibility of James’ investigation.
In addition, unions that formed the core of his political base jumped ship following the release of James’ probe, as did Democratic Party Chairman Jay Jacobs, formerly a close ally, leaving Cuomo with few backers. By the day after James’ office’s findings were released, a majority of state Assembly members favored impeachment.
The avalanche of officials saying it’s time for Cuomo to go came as public opinion quickly shifted against him, with one survey showing that 70 percent of voters believed the governor should resign, and 63 percent were in favor of state lawmakers impeaching him.
The meltdown continued late Sunday when DeRosa, second-most powerful person in state government, stepped aside.
And, on Monday, current Cuomo staffer Brittany Commisso — previously identified in James’ report as “Executive Assistant #1” — revealed her identity and spoke on national TV about her creepy encounters with the 63-year-old governor.
Beyond his career, Cuomo now faces potential legal repercussions for his behavior.
Commisso, 32, charges the governor groped her on two occasions — allegations that mean Cuomo could face “a couple” of misdemeanor charges as a result of a criminal complaint she filed in Albany.
Prosecutors in at least five New York state counties — including Nassau County, Manhattan, and Westchester County as well as Albany — have launched separate criminal probes following the report’s substantiations of forcible touching of multiple women.
And with Cuomo spending time fighting for political survival — including by orchestrating a failed deal to agree not to seek a fourth term in exchange for lawmakers dropping their impeachment process — New York state’s bureaucracy came “to a grinding halt,” lawmakers and sources told The Post.
The sexual misconduct was just one of the scandals confronting the 63-year-old governor as he announced he would step down.
He and his aides are also facing investigation into allegations they misled the public and federal authorities about deaths in nursing homes linked to the coronavirus pandemic; and that state resources were misused by Cuomo as he authored his pandemic memoir, for which he received a $5 million advance.
But it was the attorney general’s report into Cuomo’s harassment and office that landed first — and proved to be a knock-out punch.
“These interviews and pieces of evidence revealed a deeply disturbing yet clear picture: Gov. Cuomo sexually harassed current and former state employees in violation of federal and state laws,” said James at a press conference last week where she laid out the allegations.
“This investigation has revealed conduct that corrodes the very fabric and character of our state government, and shines light on injustice that can be present at the highest levels of government.”
The most disturbing claims came from Commisso, who alleged that the governor summoned her to his quarters at the Executive Mansion, then reached under her blouse and groped her, according to testimony she provided for the probe and an interview on CBS.
In a previous statement, Cuomo called that woman’s account “gut-wrenching,” but denied inappropriate physical contact with her or anyone else — a denial he has repeated frequently since the scandal erupted.
The floodgates opened in late February when Lindsey Boylan, 36, penned a Medium article accusing Cuomo of kissing her on the lips without warning and suggesting that they pass a flight by playing strip poker.
Less than a week later, Charlotte Bennett, 25, told the New York Times that Cuomo asked probing questions about her sex life that left her convinced he “wanted to sleep with” her.
One day after Bennett came forward, Cuomo halfheartedly apologized for making what he characterized as “jokes” that he admitted could be construed as “unwanted flirtation,” but denied any bad intentions and maintained he never touched anyone inappropriately.
Those allegations spurred bipartisan outrage and resulted in James’ office launching an independent investigation — despite the administration’s efforts to control the probe.
And as James investigated, women kept coming forward.
On March 1, Anna Ruch, 33, alleged that Cuomo grabbed her and kissed her cheek as she tried to pull away at a 2019 wedding — the first time they met.
And on March 6, another two former staffers went public.
Ana Liss, 35, told the Wall Street Journal that Cuomo once kissed her hand, asked if she had a boyfriend and made other remarks that left her feeling like “just a skirt.”
And Karen Hinton, 62, told the Washington Post that in 2000, Cuomo, then the head of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, grabbed her in a “very long, too long, too tight, too intimate” embrace inside a dimly lit hotel room in Los Angeles.
In an Albany press briefing held between Ruch’s allegation and those of Liss and Hinton, an “embarrassed” Cuomo offered a conditional apology “if [his accusers] were offended,” while denying allegations that he touched anyone inappropriately.
At the time, he vowed he would not resign.
After Liss and Hinton spoke up, Cuomo repeated that promise during another briefing, which also saw him try to explain away his treatment of Liss as “commonplace” niceties in his line of work, while characterizing Hinton as a “longtime political adversary” with ulterior motives.
James’ report affirmed the accounts offered by those women — and uncovered another victim, a state trooper assigned to the unit tasked with protecting Cuomo.
The trooper, who has not been publicly named, told investigators that Cuomo had her transferred to the Protective Services Unit following a chance meeting at the RFK Bridge in 2017, despite her not meeting the qualifications for the unit.
Once she was assigned to the unit that kept her in close contact with Cuomo, the governor kissed her on the cheek, touched her without warning on the back and stomach, and made numerous sexually suggestive comments in her presence, she told investigators.
The sexual harassment scandal exploded as Cuomo was already under fire his administration’s handling of COVID-19 in nursing homes.
That scandal stemmed from a directive issued by Cuomo’s Department of Health during the early days of the pandemic that forbade nursing homes from turning away patients on the basis of a positive coronavirus test — even as he publicly acknowledged the ferocity with which the virus preyed upon the elderly.
Though Cuomo quietly shelved the policy in May 2020, he never fully admitted to its potentially fatal implications, as the death toll among nursing home residents rocketed into the thousands.
Two separate analyses revealed that the state directive to admit COVID-19-positive patients was responsible for more deaths in the facilities.
“Although a determination of the number of additional nursing home deaths is beyond the capacity of the Task Force, there are credible reviews that suggest that the directive, for the approximately six weeks that it was in effect, did lead to some number of additional deaths,” a report from the New York State Bar Association found.
A report by The Empire Center — using data obtained by The Post — put the number of additional nursing home deaths potentially caused by the policy at about 1,000.
It revealed that the policy had a greater effect upstate because of how prevalent the virus was in the five boroughs and suburban communities.
Under scrutiny, the Cuomo administration refused for months to fully account for deaths linked to nursing homes during the pandemic.
They would only reveal the number of people who actually died in the facilities, not the number of residents taken to hospitals with the virus where they perished.
Cuomo’s Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker only released the full figures after a report by James in January estimated that the state’s tally was undercounting nursing home linked deaths by as much as 50 percent.
Privately addressing Democratic state lawmakers in February, top Cuomo aide DeRosa admitted that the administration intentionally obscured the numbers and refused to release requested documents because it feared a summertime federal probe from the Trump administration.
Trump’s Justice Department did launch a civil rights probe into the management of publicly-owned facilities run by the state — a small percentage of all nursing homes overall — that was later closed by the Biden administration.
However, DeRosa’s admission caught the attention of federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, who subsequently opened their own probe into the matter, which is still ongoing.
As Cuomo sought to contain the mushrooming scandals, the tactics that he’d used to squash other political problems before came under scrutiny — particularly complaints of bullying and berating from lawmakers and reporters.
Shortly after The Post broke the news of DeRosa’s admission, an enraged Cuomo allegedly phoned state Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens), a frequent critic, at his home, demanding his help in mitigating the fallout — and threatened to “destroy” him if he refused.
Cuomo — who served as state attorney general after he was secretary of housing and urban development under President Bill Clinton — has disputed Kim’s characterization of the call, insisting he never threatened him.
Along with the rampant sexual harassment documented by the attorney general’s probe and nursing home controversy, Cuomo faced an inquiry into the $5.1 million book deal he inked for his pandemic memoir.
The New York Assembly Judiciary Committee had “detailed discussions” with its lawyers about Cuomo’s book deal, implicating DeRosa via “instructions she gave to the staff in the governor’s office to help with the manuscript for Cuomo’s book being pitched to publishers,” a source previously told The Post.
The book became a best-seller in 2020, after Cuomo’s daily televised pandemic briefings made him a pandemic-era hero for many worried liberals.
But sales of the book dropped when he became embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal, and the publisher of the memoir stopped promoting it.
Additonal reporting by Aaron Feis
