UPDATE 2:30 PM EST: The press secretary for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Caitlin Girouard, released a statement this afternoon in response to sexual harassment allegations explained in further detail by former aide Lindsey Boylan:
“As we said before, Ms. Boylan’s claims of inappropriate behavior are quite simply false.”
In Ms. Boylan’s latest blog post, she opens up with a story about a plane trip in October 2017 – the manifests of all flights from October 2017 can be found [HERE] – there was no flight where Lindsey was alone with the Governor, a single press aide, and a NYS Trooper. Below is a statement that can be attributed to John Maggiore, Howard Zemsky, Dani Lever and Abbey Fashouer Collins who were on all of these flights with her:
“We were on each of these October flights and this conversation did not happen.”
ORIGINAL ARTICLE: A former aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo this week expanded on her allegations that the New York Democrat had sexually harassed her repeatedly while she worked for him.
Today I am telling my story. I never planned to share the details of my experience working in the Cuomo administration, but I am doing so now in hopes that it may make it easier for others to speak their own truth. https://t.co/n1Lcc6Ac66
— Lindsey Boylan (@LindseyBoylan) February 24, 2021
According to the victim, Lindsey Boylan, Cuomo regularly said inappropriate things to her, had his staffers track her whereabouts, and kissed her “on the lips”—without warning—during a meeting in his office.
Boylan, who once served as Cuomo’s deputy secretary for economic development and special advisor to the governor, first went public with the allegations in December.
“Yes, @NYGovCuomo sexually harassed me for years. Many saw it, and watched,” she tweeted.
“I could never anticipate what to expect: would I be grilled on my work (which was very good) or harassed about my looks. Or would it be both in the same conversation?” she continued. “This was the way for years.”
In a blog post this week, Boylan said she feared Cuomo so much that she initially turned down a promotion “because I didn’t want to be near him.”
Cuomo said things like, “Let’s play strip poker,” and once compared her to his rumored ex-girlfriend in front of other staffers.
At one point, Cuomo “stepped in front of me and kissed me on the lips” without permission, Boylan said.
“Governor Andrew Cuomo has created a culture within his administration where sexual harassment and bullying is so pervasive that it is not only condoned but expected,” Boylan wrote.
Top women surrounding Cuomo so normalized his behavior “that only now do I realize how insidious his abuse was,” she added.
Cuomo—who was riding high in the mainstream media at the time of Boylan’s initial accusations—rejected the Left’s so-called “believe women” mantra by dismissing them outright.
“It’s not true,” he said at the time. “Look, I fought for and I believe a woman has the right to come forward and express her opinion and express issues and concerns that she has. But it’s just not true.”
However, Cuomo’s stock has fallen considerably amid revelations that he concealed the coronavirus death toll in the state’s nursing homes after his controversial decision to co-mingle healthy and infected residents.
Another high-level female staffer, Melissa DeRosa, confessed the scandal to New York Democrats earlier this month, saying Cuomo’s administration feared, correctly, that the real totals might be used against them.
Since then, more top Democrats in the state have stepped forward to acknowledge Cuomo’s alarming pattern of abusive bullying as talk grows of a possible impeachment.
Along with the validation, though, Boylan said the scandal had resurrected traumatic memories of her own encounters.
“I came to work nauseous every day,” she explained.
“My relationship with his senior team—mostly women—grew hostile after I started speaking up for myself,” she continued. “I was reprimanded and told to get in line by his top aides, but I could no longer ignore it.”
In response to Boylan’s bombshell allegations, US Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY, a frequent critic of the governor, called on Cuomo to resign.
Not only has he proved himself to be the “worst governor in America,” but he is now also a “criminal sexual predator,” she said in a statement.
Stefanik had previously asked New York State officials to investigate Cuomo when Boylan first accused him of harassment back in December.
“It is an inexcusable disgrace that almost every other elected official in New York State quietly brushed this serious and credible allegation under the rug,” she said.
“Sadly, much of the media in the state either ignored this matter or chose to report the sexist character and professional smears of Ms. Boylan by Governor Cuomo’s taxpayer-funded staff,” she added.
