The first woman to publicly accuse Governor Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment claimed that he once rudely joked that he would “ride” her if he were a dog, a new report said.
Lindsey Boylan, a former governor’s aide, revealed Cuomo’s scary comment in a lengthy interview with Ronan Farrow of The New Yorker, telling him that Cuomo made the rude joke in 2018 after a meeting at the governor’s mansion.
Boylan, 36, who is one of seven women to file charges of sexual misconduct against the governor, said he made the comment after Cuomo’s dog – a half-breed German shepherd named Captain – jumped up and down near her.
She said she tried to calm the dog down, but she backed away.
So, Boylan said, Cuomo joked that he would try to “ride it” too if he were a dog.
“I remember being disgusted, but also, like, what a stupid third-year thing to say,” Boylan told the magazine.
“I just shrugged my shoulders,” she said.
A spokesman for the governor did not immediately return a request for comment.
Boylan first accused Cuomo of sexual harassment in a series of tweets in December and then detailed the governor’s alleged behavior in a detailed post on the Medium website.
She claimed that Cuomo kissed her “on the mouth” without warning inside his Manhattan office in 2018 – and also claimed that the governor had invited her to play strip poker a year earlier while on a private plane.
Cuomo denied the accusations and said he never touched anyone inappropriately.
In the interview with the New Yorker, Boylan said that his former head of administration, Howard Zemsky, once told her that Cuomo had a “crush” on her.
She also remembered an extremely toxic workplace under the government, where advisers were brought to tears and her political opponents were the target of children’s games.
She remembered an occasion when Cuomo allegedly scoffed at an aide’s haircut, leaving her in tears.
The governor also once scoffed at the weight of a former male employee, Boylan said.
“It was toxic, especially for women,” she said in an interview during her visit to the governor’s office.
Boylan also said that Cuomo, a former political enemy of the mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, had a dartboard with the mayor’s face on the grounds of the governor’s mansion.
“I couldn’t believe how brazen it was,” she told the magazine.