A Defiant Cuomo Seeks to Buy Time as Lawmakers Prepare for Impeachment - The New York Times

Legislators could decide by early next month to try to force the governor from office over allegations that he sexually harassed 11 women.

ALBANY, N.Y. — Defiant yet increasingly alone, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo determined in recent days that his best chance at political survival is to drag out the process of his possible impeachment over allegations that he sexually harassed nearly a dozen women, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

As members of the State Assembly met on Monday to lay the groundwork for impeachment proceedings, Mr. Cuomo remained focused on buying himself time, believing that events are moving too quickly and that to stay in office he and his lawyers would need to slow things down, these people said.

Mr. Cuomo is facing the prospect of becoming only the second governor to be impeached in the state’s history. Lawmakers were spurred by a report released last week by the New York State attorney general, Letitia James, that concluded Mr. Cuomo touched or verbally harassed 11 women, most of them current or former state employees.

Mr. Cuomo, who has denied touching anyone inappropriately, is in the most precarious moment of his decade-long tenure, facing a chorus of calls for his resignation from top Democrats, including President Biden and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

The fast-moving and fluid political crisis has left the governor holed up in the Executive Mansion as the fallout from the attorney general’s report increased. Roberta A. Kaplan, a prominent lawyer, resigned Monday from Time’s Up, an organization formed to fight sexual abuse, after the report described her as involved in an effort to discredit one of Mr. Cuomo’s accusers.

And the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest L.G.B.T.Q. political lobbying organization, said it was investigating its president, Alphonso David, a former top Cuomo official, for any role he may have played in helping the governor respond to accusations.

Behind the scenes, Mr. Cuomo has been grasping for a means of holding on to power. The main approach he has been considering in recent days has been to challenge whether the accusations are a basis for impeachment and to delay the process as long as possible, one of the people familiar with the discussions said.

Mr. Cuomo and his lawyers believe that the report is flawed and that they have a ready response to the most serious accusations, including those made by Brittany Commisso, an executive assistant who said the governor groped her.

The governor has sought advice from his brother, the CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, and from longtime advisers including his pollster, Jefrey Pollock, the people said. But Mr. Cuomo has grown more isolated by the day, with few defenders, except for his lawyers, speaking out on his behalf.

On Monday, a lawyer for Mr. Cuomo, Rita Glavin, made clear during an interview on MSNBC that the governor planned to fight. She challenged the accusations made by many of the women, saying some “don’t rise to the level of sexual harassment”; insisted that the incident described by Ms. Commisso did not happen; and suggested the attorney general’s report was riddled with flaws and omissions. She repeated her complaint that Mr. Cuomo’s lawyers had not been given access to the underlying evidence nor time to go over it.

The prospect of a protracted and public battle has disheartened many close to Mr. Cuomo, who have described him as somber, yet resolute. It may have figured in the sudden departure of his top aide and most loyal strategist, Melissa DeRosa, who announced her resignation late Sunday.

She had informed the governor earlier in the day that she would be leaving — the highest-profile departure from his administration since the report’s release, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation. She no longer wanted to have to defend the governor in public, the person said.

Mr. Cuomo spent much of Sunday trying to persuade Ms. DeRosa not to resign, a second person familiar with the discussions said. Ms. DeRosa had been named 187 times in the report, which said she had tried to undermine one of Mr. Cuomo’s accusers.

The governor appeared to be grappling with the idea that the situation had spiraled beyond his control, one of the people said, something wholly unfamiliar to Mr. Cuomo, who has run New York with a firm hand for more than a decade.

Yet impeachment appears increasingly inevitable: Carl E. Heastie, the speaker of the Assembly, believes he has the support from most, if not all, of the Democratic majority to impeach Mr. Cuomo, according to a person familiar with his thinking.

And there is increasing concern among those close to Mr. Cuomo and his attorneys that political pressure could lead the Albany district attorney to bring criminal charges against the governor in response to Ms. Commisso’s criminal complaint, even if the charges do not rise above a misdemeanor, two of the people said.

Under a timeline laid out on Monday, articles of impeachment might not be considered until early September — after lawmakers review evidence, hold hearings and carefully deliberate whether there are grounds to impeach Mr. Cuomo.

The governor could use the intervening time to mount a public defense, even as most people in his orbit doubted it would help save him.

But Mr. Heastie rejected the notion that the weekslong impeachment process would help the governor. Lawmakers, he said, wanted “to make sure things are done right,” reiterating that most Assembly Democrats had “no confidence in the ability of the governor to remain in office.”

Assemblyman Charles D. Lavine, a Democrat from Nassau County and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, announced on Monday that his committee would hold public and private hearings in August, after which the committee will recommend whether to draft articles of impeachment, which he said would be “airtight.”

“The question here isn’t simply, should we rush to impeach,” Mr. Lavine said. “The question is can we present, should that occur, a compelling and comprehensive case at the court of impeachment.”

Assemblyman Charles D. Lavine, a Democrat and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has described the report’s findings as “deeply disturbing.”James Estrin/The New York Times

Some longtime advisers and allies have been trying to persuade Mr. Cuomo to leave office voluntarily. Jay Jacobs, the chairman of the state’s Democratic Party and until recently one of Mr. Cuomo’s most ardent allies, spoke to the governor last week. “My conversation consisted of me telling him I thought all options were over and he should resign,” he said. “He didn’t respond one way or the other.”

He added, “His response has indicated to me that he is fixated on getting his version out.” Mr. Cuomo’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The State Assembly, which Democrats control, had launched a sprawling impeachment investigation into Mr. Cuomo in March that focused not only on the sexual harassment claims but also on the governor’s handling of nursing home deaths data during the pandemic and his possible use of state resources to write a book on leadership that netted him $5.1 million last year.

Understand the Scandals Challenging Gov. Cuomo’s Leadership

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Multiple claims of sexual harassment. At least 11 women, including current and former members of his administration, have accused Mr. Cuomo of sexual harassment, unwanted advances or inappropriate behavior. He has refused to resign, and focus has turned to the State Assembly’s ongoing impeachment investigation.

Results of an independent investigation. An independent inquiry, overseen by the New York State attorney general, found that Mr. Cuomo had harassed the women, including current and former government workers, breaking state and federal laws. The report also found that he and aides retaliated against at least one woman who made her complaints public.

Nursing home death controversy. The Cuomo administration is also under fire for undercounting the number of nursing-home deaths caused by Covid-19 in the first half of 2020, a scandal that deepened after a Times investigation found that aides rewrote a health department report to hide the real number.

Efforts to obscure the death toll. Interviews and unearthed documents revealed in April that aides repeatedly overruled state health officials in releasing the true nursing home death toll for months. Several senior health officials have resigned in response to the governor’s overall handling of the pandemic, including the vaccine rollout.

Will Cuomo be impeached? The State Assembly opened an impeachment investigation in March. It has taken on new urgency with the release of the attorney general’s report, and its pace is now expected to pick up. Democrats in the State Legislature and New York’s congressional delegation, as well as President Biden, have called on Mr. Cuomo to resign, saying he has lost the ability to govern.

The inquiry was moving slowly, but gained urgency after Ms. James unveiled her 165-page report last week. The report’s findings, based on a monthslong investigation conducted by outside lawyers deputized by Ms. James, brought immediate additional support for impeachment in the Assembly, including among those who had been previously hesitant.

The attorney general’s office has begun handing over volumes of evidence from its investigation to the Assembly, including transcripts from interviews with witnesses and troves of documents.

The governor and his team have until Friday to submit additional evidence in his defense before the conclusion of the investigation.

Mr. Cuomo’s lawyers have criticized the attorney general’s investigation as biased, politically motivated and rushed, saying it was conducted to fit a “predetermined narrative” about Mr. Cuomo’s behavior. In public appearances, they have particularly tried to dismantle Ms. Commisso’s story and that of Lindsey Boylan, the first woman to openly accuse the governor.

The judiciary committee will convene again on Aug. 16 and Aug. 23 to review the evidence and receive a briefing from Davis Polk & Wardwell, the law firm conducting the impeachment investigation. Lawmakers will then hold public and private hearings and hear testimony from outside experts on sexual assault and impeachment.

The purpose of the hearings will be to determine whether there is cause to believe Mr. Cuomo engaged in impeachable conduct, which the State Constitution defines very vaguely. By early September, the Judiciary Committee could make a decision on whether to draft articles of impeachment against Mr. Cuomo.

The State Constitution offers few parameters on the steps that need to be taken during an impeachment process, so lawmakers are drawing on examples from impeachment proceedings in other states, as well as proceedings against lower-level state officials. They have also studied the 1913 impeachment of Gov. William Sulzer, the only governor to be impeached in the history of New York.

Lawmakers in the 150-seat Assembly could impeach Mr. Cuomo with a simple majority vote. But Mr. Heastie typically proceeds on measures only if he can do so with the support of Democrats alone, which would mean having the votes from 76 out of the 106 Democratic assembly members.

On Monday, Mr. Heastie said he would not necessarily move solely with Democratic support, meaning he could take into account votes from Republicans, all of whom support impeachment, which would all but guarantee an impeachment.

A trial would then be held in the Democratic-controlled State Senate at least 30 days after an impeachment vote. A jury would be made up of most Senate members and the seven judges from the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. The State Senate has already begun consulting with outside legal experts on a possible trial.

A two-thirds majority of 62 senators and the judges is required to convict.

If convicted, Mr. Cuomo would be removed from office and potentially barred permanently from seeking statewide political office. He would be replaced by Lt. Gov. Kathleen Hochul, a Democrat.

Katie Glueck contributed reporting.

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A Defiant Cuomo Seeks to Buy Time as Lawmakers Prepare for Impeachment - The New York Times
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