Two other women came forward to accuse New York Governor Andrew Cuomo of misconduct, according to reports by The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
A former press officer, Karen Hinton, told the Post that Cuomo invited her to her dimly lit hotel room after a work event in Los Angeles in 2000, hugged her when she tried to leave and pulled her back to him when she walked away.
Ana Liss, another former adviser to Cuomo, said that in 2014 the governor hugged and kissed her on both cheeks and grabbed her waist, the Journal reported.
The new allegations increase pressure on the Democratic governor, who faces previous sexual harassment charges, as well as a scandal about the way his government handled death data from the Covid nursing home.
Cuomo’s current spokesmen responded to the new allegations, both published on Saturday.
Cuomo’s director of communications, Peter Ajemian, said Hinton’s claims “did not happen”. Rich Azzopardi, a senior adviser to Cuomo, said of Liss’ report that “reporters and photographers covered the governor for 14 years, watching him kiss men and women and pose for pictures”.
“At the mansion’s public reception, there are hundreds of people and he poses for hundreds of photos,” said Azzopardi. “This is what people in politics do.”
On Friday, New York state lawmakers passed a bill to strip the distressed governor of the temporary powers he was given to deal with the pandemic. Cuomo suggested that he sign the bill.
In late January, New York Attorney General Letitia James said the Cuomo administration underestimated the number of Covid deaths related to nursing homes by up to 50%.
Cuomo said the state did not cover up the deaths, but said last month that “we should have done a better job by providing as much information as possible as soon as possible”.
James is now overseeing an investigation into the allegations of sexual harassment against Cuomo by several women who have come forward in the past two weeks.
Lindsey Boylan, a former state economic development officer now running for the Manhattan district presidency, wrote in a Medium post on February 24 that Cuomo “abused his power as governor to sexually harass me, just as he did with so many others. women”.
Cuomo’s office vehemently denied Boylan’s allegations, including that the governor kissed her without consent and invited her to play strip poker on a flight.
Days after Boylan’s explosive posting, another former Cuomo aide, Charlotte Bennett, told The New York Times that the governor had asked her about her sex life and whether she “had ever been with an older man”.
“I understood that the governor wanted to sleep with me,” Bennett told the Times.
Cuomo, 63, said in a statement that Bennett “has every right to speak up,” but said he “never made progress towards Bennett” and never intended to “act inappropriately”.
On Monday, the Times published statements by another woman, Anna Ruch, who said Cuomo put his hand on her bare back and asked to kiss her when she first met him at a wedding in 2019.
Cuomo at a news conference on Wednesday apologized “for any pain I caused”, saying “Now I understand that I acted in a way that made people uncomfortable”.
The governor said he would not resign.
Hinton’s supposed meeting with Cuomo came after a work event in 2000, when Cuomo was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for President Bill Clinton. Hinton was an agency communications officer before leaving in 1999 after a violent dispute with Cuomo, The Washington Post reported.
In December 2000, she agreed to work as a paid consultant to provide press coverage for Cuomo’s trip to Los Angeles to promote a HUD program. After the event, Cuomo invited her to chat in her hotel room, Hinton told The Washington Post.
When she got up to leave, Cuomo hugged Hinton in a way that she described to the Post as “too long, too long, too tight, too intimate”. She said she walked away and Cuomo pulled her back into another hug, at which point she left.
Ajemian, Cuomo’s director of communications, said Hinton “is a well-known antagonist to the governor who is trying to take advantage of this moment to score cheap points with allegations made up 21 years ago.”
“All women have the right to come forward and tell their stories – however, it is also the responsibility of the press to consider self-motivation,” said Ajemian. “This is unwise.”
Liss, who was an adviser to Cuomo between 2013 and 2015, said Cuomo called her boyfriend and asked personal questions, including whether she had a boyfriend, the Journal reported.
Liss told the Journal that she felt that Cuomo’s conduct in the workplace reduced her to “just a skirt”.
Boylan tweeted messages of support to Hinton and Liss on Saturday night.