Governor Andrew Cuomo arranged for someone else to take the mandatory workplace sexual harassment training course for him – and then signed it as if he did it, prosecutor Charlotte Bennett said in a new bombshell interview aired Friday. night.
Bennett also claims that one of the governor’s top aides admitted to her last summer that he was “preparing” her – but that the matter needed no further investigation because Cuomo’s behavior had not gone further.
The explosive revelations were made by Cuomo’s former aide, 25, in an interview on “CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell”.
“At first, they apologized, said it was inappropriate,” she said of a June 30 meeting with Special Lawyer Judith Mogul de Cuomo and her chief of staff, Jill DesRosiers.
“I asked if they could let it go, saying, ‘I don’t want this to be investigated, please stop it’, you know, because I was scared.
“She said, ‘You came to us before something serious happened. It was just preparation and it has not yet been considered sexual harassment, so we don’t need to investigate, ”said Bennett.
It was not clear whether Bennett was referring to Mogul, Desrosiers or someone else at the meeting.
Cuomo had a ringer do his official training for him, Bennett also claimed.
“In 2019, he didn’t do sexual harassment training,” Bennett told O’Donnell in the interview.
“How do you know that?” O’Donnell asks.
“I was there,” says Bennett, who worked for him at the time.
“I heard Stephanie say, ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this for you,'” recalls Bennett – referring to the director of the firm, Stephanie Benton.
“I’m joking about the fact that she’s completing the training for him,” recalls Bennett.
“And then I heard her at the end asking him to sign the certificate,” said Bennett.
Bennett’s explosive claim that the governor sent an aide to complete his sexual harassment training for him directly contradicts what he said on Wednesday.
When asked by a reporter whether he had taken the mandatory training, Cuomo said simply, “The short answer is yes.”
Meanwhile, Benton “categorically denies the exchange,” according to a statement from the governor’s office that added: “This is not true,” CBS reported.
Also in the interview, Bennett said the governor had commissioned her to “find” a girlfriend for him – then, impatiently, asked a day later if she had done so, a revelation provoked in previews on Friday.
Meanwhile, on Friday, Bennett’s attorney, Debra Katz, sent a letter to Attorney General Letitia James asking the AG to ensure that the evidence related to Bennett’s allegations of sexual harassment is preserved by the governor’s office and staff. senior.
The urgency of Katz’s request “has been heightened by new recent reports that the governor’s team has modified government reports related to other matters,” the lawyer said in a press release.
This was an apparent reference to the Thursday evening news that Cuomo’s top advisers pressured state health officials to omit from a public report the number of nursing home residents who died in COVID-19 hospitals.