ALBANY, NY – A former assistant to Governor Andrew M. Cuomo published a lengthy essay on Wednesday morning accusing the governor of sexual harassment and detailing several disturbing episodes, including an unsolicited kiss in his Manhattan office.
The assistant, Lindsey Boylan, described several years of awkward interactions with Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, including an invitation to play strip poker on a government jet and an email from another top employee suggesting the governor thought that she’s a “better looking sister” to another woman.
Ms. Boylan, who was working for the state’s economic development agency at the time, published that email from December 2016, saying that the governor began calling her the other woman’s name in a professional setting, an experience she described as ‘humiliating’.
Ms. Boylan, who is running for president of Manhattan, first publicly accused the governor of sexual harassment in December, in a series of comments on TwitterAt the time, Ms. Boylan did not speak to the media, provide details of the alleged harassment or confirm it.
On Wednesday, however, Mrs. Boylan wrote that she had told her husband and mother that she was concerned about the governor. She also provided new details, including a description of an incident in 2018 when she said she and Mr. Cuomo were alone in his Manhattan office.
“As I got up to leave and walked to an open door, he stood in front of me and kissed me on the lips,” wrote Mrs. Boylan. “I was in shock, but I kept walking.”
When Ms. Boylan first went public in December, the governor firmly denied the charges.
“Look, I fought for it and I believe a woman has the right to come forward and speak up and express her views and issues and concerns that she has,” Mr Cuomo said at a news conference last year. “But it just isn’t true.”
His office on Wednesday did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Ms. Boylan wrote that her boss at Empire State Development in her early days before the Cuomo government had once told her that “the governor was in love with me,” adding that Mr. Cuomo had done his best. to touch me on my lower back, arms and legs. “
“His senior staff started monitoring my whereabouts,” she wrote, publishing a 2016 email in which a top assistant from Mr. Cuomo asked Ms. Boylan’s boss if she would be attending an event.
The governor’s attention also included a private invitation to his office in late 2016, Ms. Boylan said, when she said he showed her a cigar box, Mr. Cuomo said he received from President Bill Clinton while serving in his administration, as Secretary of housing and urban development.
“The two-decade-old reference to President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky had not escaped me,” she said.
In 2017, Ms. Boylan wrote that the governor joked that they should play strip poker on a flight, up close, an episode she said had been seen by a press officer and a state soldier.
Mrs. Boylan said she replied in a sarcastic way, “That’s exactly what I thought”.
“I tried to play it cool,” she wrote in the essay, which was published on Medium. “But then I realized how resigned I had become.”
Ms. Boylan’s allegations come when Mr. Cuomo is faced with one of the most turbulent moments of his ten-year tenure.
The governor came under fire this month after his top assistant, Melissa DeRosa, revealed in a private meeting with state lawmakers that the administration had withheld data on the full extent of the deaths of nursing home residents during the pandemic.
The revelation immediately mobilized his government, leading federal prosecutors to open an investigation and state lawmakers to consider depriving Mr. Cuomo of his pandemic emergency powers.
The governor’s behavior has also been reconsidered after Ron Kim, a Queens congressman, said Mr. Cuomo had threatened to “destroy” him in a telephone conversation after Mr. Kim publicly criticized the way his administration had done. the controversy over the nursing home. The governor’s office called Mr. Kim a liar, while Mr. Cuomo publicly attacked Mr. Kim during one of his coronavirus briefings.
On Monday, The New York Times reported on the governor’s long-standing propensity for aggression and on instances in which over the years he scolded assistants, bullied elected officials and threatened political opponents. Some former executives described the governor’s office as a toxic workplace and Mr. Cuomo, 63, as a demanding and controlling boss who rules with fear and retaliation.
Unlike previous crises Mr Cuomo has endured – from the conviction of close associates to his abrupt dissolution of a committee investigating government corruption – the nursing home scandal and reports of his private conduct are spreading out. spread Albany’s political borders.
Over the weekend, the nursing home controversy even got several mentions on “Saturday Night Live,” including a skit in which Mr. Cuomo was played by comedian Pete Davidson, who sheepishly acknowledged “nursing home stuff.”
Ms. Boylan joined the Cuomo administration in 2015 as a top assistant at Empire State Development before taking a job as a special adviser to the governor in 2018, something she said she did on the condition that she would keep her old office and have a separate floor of him and his inner circle. “
After the unwanted kiss, Ms. Boylan says her “fears got worse” and her working relationships with female members of his senior team “became hostile”.
“I was reprimanded and told by his top employees to get in line, but I could no longer ignore it,” she wrote.
Ms. Boylan, 36, left the administration in late 2018. She did not answer a request for comment via phone or text message.
“Telling my truth is not about seeking revenge. I was proud to work in Cuomo’s administration. I had looked up to the governor for so long, ”she wrote. “But his abusive behavior must stop.”
Susan Beachy contributed research.