The New York State News and Politics Thread

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141

The governor came out from behind his desk, and began groping her in a sexually aggressive manner.

“And that wasn’t just a hug,” she said. “He went for it and I kind of like was, ‘Oh, the door is right there.’ … I was mortified that a woman who works here is going to come in and see. … I was terrified of that happening, because that’s not who I am and that’s not what I’m here for.”

As panic set in, it flashed in her mind that insulting the governor could cost her the career she had been working so hard to build.

“I said to him, I said, ‘You’re going to get us in trouble,’” she recalled. “I didn’t know what else to say. … It was pretty much like ‘What are you doing?’ That’s when he slammed the door (shut). He said, ‘I don’t care.’”

He walked toward her a second time.

“I remember exactly what I was wearing,” she said. “I remember him slamming (the door) so hard that I remember thinking to myself that I’m sure the staff is, like, ‘Is everything OK up there?’ He came right back and he pulled me close and all I remember is seeing his hand, his big hand. I remember looking down like, ‘Holy sh_.’”

The governor, she said, had reached under her blouse and his hand was grasping one of her breasts over her bra.

142

But, really

“Who cares [if they] died in the hospital, died in a nursing home? They died.”

Stefanik, whose congressional district represents Watertown, Plattsburgh and Glenn Falls, is getting support “from all corners of the state” according to her senior adviser Alex DeGrasse. The strong response comes added DeGrasse because Stefanik “would immediately be the strongest Republican candidate in both a primary and general gubernatorial election.”

The four-term congresswoman “continues to set records as the most prolific New York Republican fundraiser ever in state history consistently earning the strongest performance at the ballot box cycle after cycle on Election Day,” DeGrasse added, “She appreciates the widespread encouragement and is not ruling anything out - nor will she make her decision based on others’ timetables.”

143

The agreements, obtained through a Freedom of Information request, show principal or senior partners working on the probe are being paid $750 an hour. Mid-level partners are making $575 per hour, while junior partners are paid $500. Senior associates will be paid $450 an hour and junior associates make $325.

And I wonder who pays for that?

144

Cuomo has suffered a significant loss in support among Democrats: “In February, Democrats were prepared to re-elect Cuomo 65-26 percent. Today, Democrats say they would re-elect Cuomo next year by the narrowest of margins, 46-43 percent,” Greenberg said.

145

Andy feels the heat:

Andy throws a bone:

146

Speaking of quiet…

This from the daily NEWS. Why? Cuz dead people are dead and the line goes directly back to Cuomo. Period.

147

and this, this is just all Cuomo.

Are there any grandmas left, Andy?

“There is an attitude that they’ll be fine, why should they take the vaccine?” the governor said at a press briefing, referring to young people.

“My argument is, yeah, maybe you’ll be fine, and by the way, you don’t know that either,’’ the governor said. “Maybe you will get a long-haul syndrome that we’re not really be sure what it is yet but a lingering consequence of COVID.

“Or maybe you’ll go home and kiss your grandmother and wind up killing your grandmother. So show some civic responsibility,’’ Cuomo said.

His comments come just over a year after the state Health Department’s controversial edict that sent nursing home residents who tested positive for the virus back to the facilities — even though the elderly are among the most vulnerable to COVID-19.

A February analysis of data by the nonprofit Empire Center for Public Policy found that “several hundred and possibly more than 1,000” fatalities from the virus in nursing homes in the state could be tied to the policy — despite the Cuomo administration insisting it was not a “significant factor” in the toll.

Cuomo and his aides are accused of then withholding the true number of nursing home residents who died from COVID-19 by excluding those who ultimately passed away in hospitals — a scandal that is now at the center of state and federal probes.

148

Those rates are very low for a firm like Cleary. I was billed out at $420 as a first year almost 15 years ago, and the price went up quickly.

149

Always on team Cuomo. I bet.

150

Whats happening with this douche?

It seems his sexual predatoryness has been forgotten about and swept under the carpet.

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Furthermore, where is the liberal left on this site? You’d think a politician who rides his ego through the plague barking orders which resulted in the deaths of say 15 thousand grannies and Pop-pops and then tried to cover up the numbers to save face and career would deserve a shout out. One also wonder where the #Metoo crowd is on this site, as the Cuomo sex scandal is ALL about power and abuse.

Not. A. Peep.

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152

CUOMO: “I never said anything that I believed was inappropriate. I never meant to make you feel that way. You may hear it that way, you may interpret it that way. And I respect that, and I apologize to you if I said something you think is offensive.”

REPORTER: “The harasser’s intention doesn’t matter. You can apologize if you make someone feel uncomfortable. I’m just wondering — do you acknowledge that, according to the law, that doesn’t matter and would still be considered —”

CUOMO: “Harassment is not making someone feel uncomfortable. That is not harassment. If I just made you feel uncomfortable, that is not harassment. That’s you feeling uncomfortable.”

153

A “mistake”?!? Ya think?
CNN should fire this asshole immediately.

Of course, I think they should have fired him long ago for general assholery, and specifically during the covid pandemic for asshole softball interviews with Andrew Cuomo, but this is outright malfeasance.

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154

They both need to go.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered infectious COVID patients into nursing homes, exposing vulnerable elderly people to the virus and resulting in hundreds of extra deaths. His punishment: an Emmy for his news conferences and $5 million-plus for a book on what a great job he’d done, a book that sold only 50,000 copies. Consequences are for the little people.

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156

Ah, even more scumbaggery.

https://archive.is/P5CVH

After one of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s most trusted aides and closest friends, Joseph Percoco, was convicted of soliciting and accepting more than $300,000 in bribes from executives with business before the state, the governor quickly distanced himself.

There would be “no tolerance” for corruption, he said, calling Mr. Percoco’s behavior the opposite of everything he hoped his administration represented.

“The rule of law is paramount,” Mr. Cuomo said in 2018, when Mr. Percoco was sentenced to prison a few months later. “Joe Percoco is paying the price for violating the public trust.”

Privately, however, members of the governor’s inner circle — including one of his sisters — have for years been quietly raising money for Mr. Percoco, according to interviews and newly obtained emails.

As recently as last year, the group was helping to fund Mr. Percoco’s appeal of his conviction, after some of its members also helped finance a trust fund for his children.

In one email sent in February 2020, Madeline Cuomo, Mr. Cuomo’s sister, sought donations from two dozen people. They included Mr. Cuomo’s former top political fund-raiser, a former chief of staff, several prominent Albany lobbyists and the head of Northwell Health, the state’s largest hospital system, who is a stalwart Cuomo ally.

“Joe and his family are grateful for all your support to date,” Ms. Cuomo wrote in the email, sent on Super Bowl Sunday. “Unfortunately, his fight is far from over, and in order to continue his legal battle he’ll need financial resources.”

She added: “My family and I will be participating in that effort, and I hope we can count on you to join in the effort.”

On Tuesday, Ms. Cuomo said that she had never told the governor about the fund-raising effort.

157

Cuomo’s incompetence killed Grandma.

The 242-page report by the NYSBA’s Task Force on Nursing Homes and Long-Term Care also blasts Cuomo for not reversing the Department of Health’s “unreasonable” mandate sooner than he did, saying it remained in effect weeks longer than necessary.

“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,” the report says.

"The Department of Health issued a report in 2020 in which it argued unconvincingly that the admission of 6,326 COVID-positive residents during the period the Health directive was in effect had no impact. That cannot be the case, and has now been shown not to be the case."

The report says it is based on available information “from the onset of the pandemic through the end of April 2021.”

158

“He’s absolutely running a perfect crisis management campaign,” said Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf, who noted the strategy is playing out as he predicted in the spring. “It can’t go on forever; at some point there will have to be closure. But the expectation is if there were some sort of criminality involved we would have had a result already of some kind. If they had a political pound of flesh to add, they would have."

Yeah, but it’s his own damn crisis. :doh:

159

“Specifically, we find that the Governor sexually harassed a number of current and former New York State employees by, among other things, engaging in unwelcome and nonconsensual touching, as well as making numerous offensive comments of a suggestive and sexual nature that created a hostile work environment for women,” the report said.

Now let’s get after that killing people in nursing home thing.

Wow, Cuomo immediately out with a video to say he did nothing wrong.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?513912-1/ny-governor-cuomo-denies-sexual-harassment-allegations-independent-report&live

160

Wow. This is just damning.

The investigation discovered the incident took place in early November 2017. Officials identified her as Trooper #1:

In early November 2017, the Governor briefly met a New York State Trooper (“Trooper #1”), a woman, at an event on the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge (the “RFK Bridge,” also known as the Triborough Bridge). After meeting Trooper #1, he spoke with a senior member of his protective detail (“Senior Investigator #1”) about seeking to have Trooper #1 join the Protective Services Unit (“PSU”), the unit of the New York State Police that is in charge of protecting the Governor and works in close vicinity of the Governor. Trooper #1 was then hired into the PSU, despite not meeting the requirement to have at least three years of State Police service to join the PSU. In an email to Trooper #1 shortly after the RFK Bridge event, Senior Investigator #1 noted, attaching a vacancy notice with a two-year service requirement (as opposed to three years), “Ha ha they changed the minimum from 3 years to 2. Just for you.”6

After Trooper #1 joined the PSU, the Governor sexually harassed her on a number of occasions, including by: (1) running his hand across her stomach, from her belly button to her right hip, while she held a door open for him at an event; (2) running his finger down her back, from the top of her neck down her spine to the middle of her back, saying “hey, you,”7 while she was standing in front of him in an elevator; (3) kissing her (and only her) on the cheek in front of another Trooper and asking to kiss her on another occasion, which she deflected; and (4) making sexually suggestive and gender-based comments, including (a) asking her to help him find a girlfriend and describing his criteria for a girlfriend as someone who “[c]an handle pain,”8 (b) asking her why she wanted to get married when marriage means “your sex drive goes down,”9 and (c) asking her why she did not wear a dress. Trooper #1 found these interactions with the Governor not only offensive and uncomfortable, but markedly different from the way the Governor interacted with members of the PSU who were men, and she conveyed these incidents contemporaneously to colleagues. Several other PSU Troopers corroborated Trooper #1’s allegations, including some who had personally witnessed some of the touching and comments as well as the gender-based difference in the way the Governor treated Troopers.

And it doesn’t simply end there: