A former New York governor’s aide, Andrew Cuomo, accused him of intimidation and sexual harassment, adding to the allegations she made for the first time in December. In an essay posted on Medium on Wednesday, the former official accused the governor of “going out of his way” to touch her “lower back, arms and legs” and kiss her during an individual meeting.
Lindsey Boylan, a former chief of staff of the New York state economic agency, said the governor had an “uncomfortable” interest in her after she was appointed to the post in 2015. “My boss soon informed me that the governor had a fall ‘on me’, she wrote, saying that the Director of the Governor’s Offices told her that Cuomo suggested that she “look for images of Lisa Shields – her alleged ex-girlfriend – because ‘we could be sisters’ and I was’ the beautiful sister. ‘”
“The governor started calling me ‘Lisa’ in front of colleagues,” she wrote. “It was degrading.”
Boylan, who is now running for the Manhattan district presidency, wrote in a series of December tweets that Cuomo “sexually harassed me for years”.
“I could never predict what to expect: I would be asked about my work (which was very good) or harassed because of my appearance. Or were they both in the same conversation? That has been the way for years, ”she wrote.
The governor denied the charges at the time. “It’s not true,” he said during a Press conference. “I fought and I believe that a woman has the right to come forward and express her opinion and express questions and concerns that she has. But that is not true.”
His office again denied the charges on Wednesday. “As we said before, Boylan’s claims about inappropriate behavior are simply false,” said press secretary Caitlin Girouard in a statement. Girouard said Boylan’s recollection of a 2017 flight on the governor’s jet – in which she claimed he suggested playing strip poker – cannot be true because the flight records do not match his account of who was on board.
“He was sitting across from me, so close that our knees almost touched. His press officer was on my right and a state policeman behind us,” said Boylan of the experience. Girouard said “there was no flight where Lindsey was alone with the governor, a single press officer and a NYS soldier”.
Cuomo’s press secretary shared what she said was the governor’s schedule for October 2017, which lists all passengers on their flights, as well as a testimonial from other travel advisors. “We were on each of those October flights and that conversation did not happen,” said senior advisor to Governor John Maggiore, president and CEO of Empire State Development Howard Zemsky, former Cuomo director of communications Dani Lever and former secretary press release Abbey Fashouer Collins in a statement.
Boylan said he had long “tried to excuse” the governor’s behavior, but he couldn’t do it anymore after he gave her an unsolicited kiss during a private meeting in his New York City office. According to Boylan, the governor “stepped forward” when she was leaving his office and kissed her on the lips. “I was in shock, but I kept walking,” she wrote.
Boylan said she passed the desk of Cuomo’s executive secretary on leaving her office and said she was “afraid to have seen the kiss”.
“The idea that someone would think that I maintained my high position because of the governor’s ‘passion’ for me was more degrading than the kiss itself,” she added.
Boylan said the governor’s “widespread harassment” was not limited to her. According to Boylan, the governor also “made unflattering comments about the weight of fellow women … ridiculed them about their romantic relationships and other significant people” and “said that the reasons why men receive women are ‘money and power'”.
“Governor Andrew Cuomo has created a culture within his administration where sexual harassment and bullying are so widespread that they are not only tolerated, but expected,” wrote Boylan. “His inappropriate behavior towards women was an assertion that he liked you, that you must be doing something right. He used intimidation to silence his critics. And if you dared speak, you would face the consequences.”
Boylan wrote in his average essay that he was motivated to go public after learning that Cuomo was being considered as a United States attorney general. “Seeing his name fluctuate as a potential candidate for the US attorney general – the highest law enforcement officer in the country – pissed me off,” she said.
“In some tweets, I told the world what some close friends, relatives and my therapist had known for years: Andrew Cuomo abused his power as governor to sexually harass me, just as he had done with so many other women,” she wrote.
“I know that some will consider my experience trivial. We are used to powerful men behaving badly when no one is looking. But what does that say about us when everyone is looking and no one says anything?”
In response to Boylan’s essay, Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York called for Cuomo’s resignation. “Sexual harassment and sexual abuse in the workplace is not a political issue, it is right and wrong. Governor Cuomo must resign immediately,” wrote Stefanik in a statement published in Twitter. “… Any elected official who does not immediately request his resignation is an accomplice.”
Stefanik is not the first New York lawmaker to call for the end of Cuomo’s term. Congressman Ron Kim is defending the impeachment, saying the governor threatened him after Kim lobbied his office over “hidden” data on deaths in nursing homes during the pandemic.
“This is not about a feud between two people, but about their ongoing efforts to involve other lawmakers with lies and cover up their deadly and unilateral policies during this pandemic,” wrote Kim in the New York Daily News. “The governor’s attempt to force me to lie for his administration must be the last straw.”
The FBI and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have opened an investigation on how the Cuomo administration dealt with nursing home residents who contracted COVID-19 in the early months of the pandemic.