The Patriot Post® · Another Bad Week for Andrew Cuomo

We almost went an entire week without talking about The Shame of the Empire State. Almost. We tried. But the guy just couldn’t stay out of the news.

New York’s Emmy Award-winning governor, Andrew Cuomo, continues to insist that he never touched anyone inappropriately and that he won’t resign from office — this after yet another accuser, a member of the Executive Chamber staff at the governor’s mansion, came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct.

The woman, who hasn’t been named publicly and is apparently “much younger” than the governor, says that she and Cuomo were alone on the second floor of his residence, where she’d been summoned to help him fix a problem with his cellphone. There, he stuck his hand under her blouse and groped her.

Gee. That sure sounds inappropriate.

One, two, three, four, five, six. Anyone else sensing a pattern here?

“The details of this report are gut-wrenching,” Cuomo said while fighting back crocodile tears. “I am not going to speak to the specifics of this or any other allegation given the ongoing review, but I am confident in the result of the attorney general’s report.”

Confident, eh? We’re not so sure. As National Review’s Andrew McCarthy reports, “On Monday, the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, appointed two well-regarded lawyers to investigate Cuomo’s sexual-harassment scandal. … Meantime, those calling for Governor Cuomo to resign now include Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the powerful Democratic majority leader in the state senate, whose comments along those lines were echoed by Carl Heastie, the Democratic speaker of the state assembly. The governor has reportedly been pleading with state lawmakers behind the scenes, seeking to dissuade further calls for him to resign — which he insists he has no intention of doing.”

And if he was so “confident,” why would it be that, as The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, “In the days after … Cuomo was first accused of sexual harassment by a former aide, the governor’s office called at least six former employees either to find out if they had heard from the accuser or to glean information about her in conversations that some said they saw as attempts to intimidate them”?

The governor, it seems, has a knack for Clintonian heavy-handedness.

Moreover, though — and far more seriously — Cuomo continues to escape accountability for his catastrophic COVID-19 malfeasance.

We’ve been over this ground before, but it bears repeating: His actions as governor likely caused the deaths of thousands of his state’s elderly citizens. The facts are stubborn, and they make clear that Cuomo shoved his state’s coronavirus-positive elderly folks back into nursing homes, where the deadly virus could spread unchecked among our most vulnerable population. And, if we’re to believe his top aide, Cuomo then tried to cover up the true death toll — all while cashing in on his book about leadership during a crisis.

New York Republican Representative Elise Stefanik has led the charge against Cuomo, having weeks ago called his actions “a massive corruption and coverup scandal at the highest level of New York State Government” and demanding his resignation.

Now, finally, even some powerful Democrats are joining in. As The Wall Street Journal’s Jimmy Vielkind reports, “The New York State Assembly said on Thursday that it would start an impeachment investigation into Gov. Andrew Cuomo. … After lawmakers met privately Thursday afternoon, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Democrat from the Bronx, said the Democrat-dominated chamber’s judiciary committee would have authority to interview witnesses, subpoena documents and evaluate evidence as members consider possible articles of impeachment.”

It’s about time. Apparently, though, no New York governor has been impeached in more than a century.

We’d say the Empire State is long overdue.