New Yorker: Cuomo Joked He Wanted to 'Mount' Female Staffer Like a Dog
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is accused of making a sexual joke to a female staffer, saying that if he were a dog, he would try to "mount" her, the staffer told The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow.
Lindsey Boylan, who first went public with her claims of inappropriate behavior on the part of the governor in December, discussed the incident, which she says happened in February 2018, in an interview released on Thursday.
She said that following a press conference where Cuomo showed off his new puppy, the governor approached her with dog, which jumped up and down near her. Boylan said that she reached out to the dog to calm him before moving away, which is when she says Cuomo joked that if he were a dog, he would try to "mount" her also.
"I remember being grossed out but also, like, what a dumb third-grade thing to say," Boylan told the New Yorker, adding that she "just shrugged it off," and did not respond.
A spokesperson for Cuomo declined to comment on this specific incident, but restated the governor’s denial of inappropriate behavior with Boylan.
Last December, Boylan first tweeted that Cuomo "sexually harassed me for years," and that "Many saw it, and watched."
She added, "I could never anticipate what to expect: would I be grilled on my work (which was very good) or harassed about my looks. Or would it be both in the same conversation? This was the way for years."
The New Yorker also reports that "As Boylan’s disclosures began to draw notice on social media, a group of current and former Cuomo staffers who served as his informal crisis-communications brain trust moved to squash them 'in real time,'" and eventually they "arrived at a plan to leak Boylan’s personnel records, which included allegations that Boylan had bullied colleagues, some of them women of color."
Boylan told the New Yorker that she was stunned after seeing articles reporting on her personnel records.
"I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe," she said. "My life was, you know, for a period, destroyed."
Cuomo’s acting counsel, Beth Garvey, told the magazine in a statement: "With certain limited exceptions, as a general matter, 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."
Boylan eventually went on to detail her allegations against Cuomo in a Medium post last February, saying, "I realized I had to own this experience. It was something I was going to have to talk about eventually."
The post prompted several of the governor’s other accusers to come forward, according to former Cuomo staffer Charlotte Bennett, who has also accused him of sexual harassment.
"Seeing Lindsey’s story was a huge factor in my decision to come forward," she said. "Coming forward didn’t feel like a choice — it felt like my responsibility to validate Lindsey’s story and signal to others that it was O.K. to come forward."
Although Cuomo has denied the allegations of having "touched anyone inappropriately," he did concede at one point, "I now understand that I acted in a way that made people feel uncomfortable," though a spokesperson did add, "As we said before, Ms. Boylan’s claims of inappropriate behavior are quite simply false."
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