New York Governor Andrew Cuomo tried to explain his past interactions with officials as the embattled Democrat faces multiple sexual harassment charges.
“Questions were raised about some of my previous interactions with people in the office,” began Cuomo in a press release on Sunday. “I never intended to offend anyone or cause any harm. I spend most of my life at work and colleagues are often also personal friends.”
“Sometimes, at work, I think I’m joking and I make jokes that I think are funny. Sometimes, I tease people in a way that I think is humorous, ”explained the governor. “I do it in public and in private. You saw me do it at briefings hundreds of times. I teased people about their personal lives, their relationships, about getting married or not getting married. I don’t want to offend and just try to add a little of levity and playfulness to what is a very serious business. “
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Cuomo continued: “Now I understand that my interactions may have been insensitive or very personal and that some of my comments, given my position, made others feel in ways I never intended. I recognize that some of the things I said were misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation. To the extent that someone felt that way, I’m really sorry about that. “
The governor, however, offered an explicit denial that he “touched anyone” and “never made proposals to anyone”, which directly contradicts the statements made by his former aide Lindsey Boylan, who claimed he touched and kissed her. strength on the lips.
“I never intended to make anyone feel uncomfortable, but these are claims that New Yorkers deserve answers to,” said Cuomo. “That is why I asked for an external and independent review to analyze these allegations.
“Separately, my office has anecdotally heard that some people have contacted Ms. [Charlotte] Bennett to express discontent with her for presenting herself. My message to anyone who is doing this is that you misjudged what matters to me and my administration and must stop now – period. “
Neither Boylan nor Bennett responded to Fox News’s requests for comment.
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Boylan, Cuomo’s former assistant secretary for economic development and special adviser, accused the governor in a hard-hitting essay published on Wednesday of “going out of the way to touch me on the lower back, arms and legs”, kissing him forcibly on their lips during an individual meeting and suggesting that they “play strip poker” during an airplane trip.
Cuomo’s office denied Boylan’s allegations of harassment, calling them “simply false” and insisting that the strip poker comment “did not happen”.
Meanwhile, Bennett, who is described in a bombshell report by The New York Times as “an executive assistant and health policy advisor to the Cuomo government until she left in November,” claimed that Cuomo “asked questions about his sex life, if she was monogamous in her relationships and if she had ever had sex with older men. “
“I understood that the governor wanted to sleep with me and was terribly uncomfortable and scared,” Bennett told the Times. “And I was wondering how I was going to get out of this and I assumed it was the end of my job.”
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In a press release on Saturday, Cuomo called Bennett “a valuable and hardworking member of our team during COVID”, who has “every right to speak up”.
“When she came to me and talked about being a sexual assault survivor and how it shaped her and her continued efforts to create an organization that would empower her voice to help other survivors, I tried to support and help,” said Cuomo in a statement, which was issued to the Times. “Mrs. Bennett’s initial impression was right: I was trying to be a mentor to her. I never made any progress towards Ms. Bennett nor did I intend to act inappropriately. The last thing I wanted was to do it feel any of the things that are being reported. “