How Andrew Cuomo’s workforce tried to tarnish one among his accusers

Written by Maggie Haberman and Jesse McKinley
Days after Lindsey Boylan turned the primary lady to accuse Gov. Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment, folks tied to the governor began circulating an open letter that they hoped former workers members would signal.
The letter was a full-on assault on Boylan’s credibility, suggesting that her accusations, made in a sequence of Twitter posts in December, have been premeditated and politically motivated. It disclosed personnel complaints filed in opposition to her and tried to hyperlink her to supporters of former President Donald Trump.
“Weaponizing a claim of sexual harassment for personal political gain or to achieve notoriety cannot be tolerated,” the letter concluded. “False claims demean the veracity of credible claims.”
The preliminary thought, in accordance with three folks with direct information of the occasions, was to have former Cuomo aides — particularly ladies — signal their names to the letter and flow into it pretty extensively.
Multiple drafts have been created, and Cuomo was concerned in creating the letter, one of many folks mentioned. Current aides to the governor emailed not less than one draft to a gaggle of former advisers. From there, it circulated to present and former high aides to the governor.
It is just not clear how many individuals have been requested to signal the letter, however two former officers, talking on the situation of anonymity as a result of they didn’t need to anger Cuomo, determined that they didn’t need their names on it.
The letter, which was reviewed by The New York Times, was by no means launched. Boylan didn’t instantly elaborate or comply with up on her Twitter posts in December, permitting her accusations to fade, together with the urgency of the trouble to discredit her. Still, the letter exhibits that the Cuomo administration was poised to rapidly and aggressively undercut Boylan, a Democrat who’s operating for Manhattan borough president.
At the time, officers within the governor’s workplace have been conscious of one other sexual harassment subject involving Cuomo that had not but turn out to be public.
Six months earlier, Charlotte Bennett, an government assistant and senior briefer, had advised two senior officers within the governor’s workplace that he had harassed her, asking her probing private questions together with whether or not she was monogamous and whether or not she slept with older males.
Bennett went public together with her allegations in The New York Times final month, saying in an interview how she “understood that the governor wanted to sleep with me,” including that she “felt horribly uncomfortable and scared.”
Bennett got here ahead simply days after Boylan had written an essay on Medium, detailing the allegations that she initially made on Twitter Dec. 13. Boylan wrote that the governor would repeatedly attempt to contact her on her arms, legs and decrease again, and that he as soon as prompt they “play strip poker.”
Since then, a number of different ladies have accused Cuomo of inappropriate conduct, from undesirable sexual advances to unsolicited kisses and groping.
The governor has denied ever touching anybody inappropriately and has pleaded with New Yorkers to await the result of two separate investigations: one overseen by the state lawyer common, Letitia James, and one other by the state Assembly. While Cuomo has prompt that a few of his actions or statements could have been misinterpreted, his rejection of Boylan’s claims has been way more strenuous.
“I believe a woman has the right to come forward and express her opinion and express issues and concerns that she has,” Cuomo mentioned Dec. 14. “But it’s just not true.”
The allegations and ensuing political firestorm have left the governor on the lowest political ebb in his decade-long tenure, defiantly resisting calls from most of New York’s outstanding elected officers to resign.
In an ABC News interview broadcast Tuesday night, President Joe Biden mentioned that he believed Cuomo ought to resign if investigators confirmed the accusers’ claims. The president’s remarks represented a slight shift — and elevated stakes for Cuomo — from feedback Biden made Sunday, when he famous solely that “the investigation is underway, and we should see what it brings us.”
Richard Azzopardi, a senior adviser to the governor, mentioned Tuesday that the administration had no touch upon the letter about Boylan, citing the continuing investigations.
At least one model of the letter included Boylan’s textual content exchanges with a few of Cuomo’s senior advisers final 12 months, in an effort to recommend that she was malicious. The Times is just not quoting extensively from the letter, to keep away from publishing character assaults that weren’t made publicly.
The draft extensively disparaged Boylan and accused her of utilizing her claims for “political retribution.”
The letter identified that Boylan’s marketing campaign marketing consultant additionally represented a political adversary of the governor’s, and that Boylan was “supported by lawyers and financial backers of Donald Trump: an active opponent of the governor.”
The preliminary plan for a letter about Boylan illustrated how the Cuomo administration was ready to launch a broader effort to wreck her credibility.
The method appeared per a tradition of intimidation from the governor’s workplace that former aides have described, and Boylan was clearly a goal.
The Wall Street Journal reported final week that aides to Cuomo known as not less than six former aides shortly after Boylan’s Twitter posts, which accused the governor of harassing her in entrance of others. The calls have been to ask whether or not the previous aides had heard from the accuser, or to study issues about her. Some of these contacted felt as if the calls have been meant to intimidate them from talking out.
Another of Cuomo’s accusers and one other former aide, Ana Liss, mentioned that she had acquired a name from a high adviser to the governor shortly after Boylan tweeted concerning the governor in December.
“I thought, why would he do that?” Liss, who now works for Monroe County, mentioned in an interview. “He was trying to confirm how broad Lindsey’s network was.”
On Tuesday, Boylan’s lawyer, Jill Basinger, mentioned the letter was one other try and smear her consumer.
“Once again, a victim of sexual harassment who has the courage to tell her story is put in the position of not only having to relive the trauma of a toxic work environment but defend herself against the malicious leaking of supposed personnel files, character assassinations and a whisper campaign of retaliation,” Basinger mentioned. “This page needs to be ripped out of the governor’s harassment handbook.”
The use of such ways in harassment claims is so commonplace that it has its personal acronym: DARVO, which stands for “deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender.”
“It is incredibly common for individuals who experience sexual harassment to also experience retaliation,” mentioned Emily Martin, vp for schooling and office justice on the National Women’s Law Center, which runs the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund. “We’ve heard from thousands of individuals who are seeking help to address workplace harassment, and more than 70% of them say they have also experienced retaliation.”
Shortly after Boylan had first accused Cuomo, a number of media organizations printed particulars of her personnel data that have been launched by the Cuomo administration, outlining unflattering accounts of Boylan’s previous actions as a boss and suggestions of disciplinary motion in opposition to her.
For supporters of Cuomo, who has denied any wrongdoing, the paperwork have been exculpatory, portray an image of a disgruntled worker with an ax to grind.
Beth Garvey, appearing counsel to Cuomo, defended the discharge of Boylan’s data, saying on Tuesday that, with sure exceptions, “it is within a government entity’s discretion to share redacted employment records, including in instances when members of the media ask for such public information and when it is for the purpose of correcting inaccurate or misleading statements.”
She, too, cited the lawyer common’s investigation and avoided further remark.
The pace at which the paperwork have been supplied was distinctive, notably contemplating that statehouse reporters in Albany and elsewhere are accustomed to ready for months, if not years, for entry to public data by the state’s Freedom of Information Law.
“The administration has a well-documented record to being pretty closed on FOIL,” mentioned Blair Horner, government director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, noting efforts to stymie reporters trying into Joseph Percoco, a detailed aide of Cuomo’s who was convicted of federal corruption expenses in 2018. “There’s considerable and consistent examples of them making it extremely difficult to get records.”

Lawyers who work on sexual harassment mentioned that an worker’s work historical past was immaterial as to whether or not they’ll declare harassment.

“There’s not a defense to harassment that the person was a bad employee,” mentioned Elizabeth Kristen, a senior workers lawyer with Legal Aid at Work in San Francisco, including, “It’s not even relevant. Maybe she was the worst employee in the world, but she could still be harassed.”