Ex-Cuomo staff say he verbally, mentally abused

Andrew Cowomo, a former Gow aide, told how he spotted her at a lobbying event, “in a kind of dance pose” and then hired her for his office, where she was “verbally and mentally abused” was to. He told New York magazine, Recalling how he would criticize his organizations and once threatened to “end” his career over his failure to transfer phone calls.

The account is one of 30, New York wrote, from women who “talked about their experiences with Cuomo, almost all who worked for her, well and by the governor and her top female colleagues.” Commented on the extreme pressure applied to wearing expensive clothes; some were explicitly told by senior staff that they had to wear heels whenever they were around.

The ex-employee, identified only as Kaitlyn, spoke to New York for an article published on Friday, as dozens of Democratic lawmakers at the state and federal levels accused Cuomo of sexual harassment by six women and still roaming Wale called for his resignation over the scandal. On handling his administration of coronovirus in nursing homes.

Catiline first met Cuomo in 2016 when hosting a program for the governor at a lobbying firm, he told New York.

While he was walking out, Kyomo stopped introducing himself to workers at the event, including Katilin.

The governor recognized Catiline from a previous job she held with a Democratic poll, and told her she would soon return to government, working at the state level, she said.

Lindsey boylan
Lindsay Boylan is one of the women who has accused Cuomo of inappropriate behavior.
Rashid Omar Abbasi

“Then he caught me in a kind of dance pose,” she recalls as a photographer. “I was thinking, ‘This is the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had in my life … don’t touch me.’

He said that within a week, Caitlin received a call from the governor’s office asking him to interview her for the job, despite not giving her contact information to anyone in Kiumo’s circle.

“We all knew it was only because of how I looked,” Caitlin told New York. “Why would you ask someone else to come in two days after a two-minute conversation at a party?”

Although Katlin considered work for her career, she soon regretted it, she told New York.

He often had to get out of the shower in the morning to meet Cuomo at his Midtown Manhattan office, simply because he decided to leave early for work, he remembered.

Charlotte Bennett
Charlotte Bennett is a former employee of Cuomo, who also says she sexually assaulted him.
Twitter

Then, when she managed to arrive on time, Cuomo would question why she did not look together.

“” You decided not to be ready today? “” He asked remembering her. “Or, ‘You didn’t make up today?”

Katelyn said she constantly felt pressured to wear designer clothes and heels to meet the governor’s expectations, a goal she was difficult to meet on her salary and was still paying off student loans.

A spokesman for Cuomo denied New York that the administration had ever expected employees to dress in a certain way.

But in a separate piece Published on Friday by The New York TimesA dozen women confirmed the characterization, saying they felt pressured to wear heel, clothes and makeup because word around the administration was that Cuomo had priority.

The division between employees who comply with that unspecified dress code and which is also not clear at the State Capitol Building in Albany, where those who have dressed in Cuomo’s taste, are seated within their eyesight, while those who Do not sit in the opposite direction of the office, four former colleagues told the Times.

A spokesperson for the governor disputed The Times, saying the employee was “based on what makes sense organizationally”.

Beyond the pressure of conformity, Cuomo told New York that work was also decreasing, with Cuomo regularly losing his cool when he failed to transfer phone calls using the touch-key-keypad.

“You can’t find the f-king phone – I’m going to end your career,” she recalled once threatening him.

When Caitlin offered Kyomo her cell phone number on a different day, she remembered, the governor had acted, as if she was coming at him.

“I thought it was a normal thing to give to your boss,” she said.

At a Super Bowl party when she did not start working for Cuomo, the governor had a conversation with a young woman, a member of the public, with a pigeon tattoo on her arm.

The next morning at an office meeting, Cuomo instructs his colleagues to find the tattooed woman and possibly ask her to hire gubernatorial staff, Katlin said – a horrific flashback to her being hired. Given.

Ana Liss, one of the first five women to record accusing the governor of sexual harassment, told New York that Cuomo bathed her with trinets and invitations to special parties – but she always suspected it Looks that good gestures were only based on them.

“I know my heart in my heart that this is because the governor thinks I am very cute,” she told the magazine, recalling the feelings she felt when the governor turned her back to her parties at parties He will feel it. “On one side, I was like, ‘Wow, look at me;” Then I felt gross about it. I didn’t know if he really knew my name.

“They thought I looked good in that dress.”

Lis, who no longer works for Cuomo, said she was amazed at how attractive young women were among Cuomo’s employees.

“There was no one who was unattractive,” he told New York. “I felt like I was in ‘Stepford Wives’, but with younger women. Their briefs always kept pretty, leggy youngsters out of college.”

Lis has alleged that Cuomo patted her with nicknames, including “Sparky,” “Blondie,” Sweetheart and “Honey,” and asked probing questions about her personal life.

Lis also told the Times that it became clear to her that Cuomo hired her for his looks rather than his work. The governor told the paper, he would often lock her on the table to talk, kissing her hands, once with other employees taking notice.

“He said, ‘Oh, he likes you, ” She told the Times. “I took it as a badge of honor, but then I thought it was kind of gross. I felt that I am going there to pursue my career as a thought activist. I didn’t want to play that weird game. “

Although she, too, asked questions about her dating life, recalling Cuomo, Kaitlin said she was unsure if any of her experiences constituted workplace sexual harassment – as did five other current or former Cuomo employees, including Lis. Has alleged – he said he still felt that his time in the governor’s planning was a living hell.

She told New York that she felt “verbally and mentally abused by her and her employees,” and considered the work environment “a form of coercive control”.

Several other former female employees similarly characterized her time in the Cuomo administration, including now Alessandra Biagy, a state senator representing parts of the Bronx and Westchester, one of dozens of polls Who has called for the resignation of Cuomo.

Within a few weeks of joining the Cuomo administration in 2016, Biaggi had a bizarre first encounter with Cuomo during a party at the executive mansion, as a lawyer who worked for Alfonso David, the then chief counsel to the governor. .

“The governor comes to me and grabs my elbow,” he told New York. “He didn’t say ‘welcome’ or ‘thank you’. He said ‘good dance moves’ and went.”

“I just felt like it was so weird,” he said. “I had my first conversation with him, and I didn’t know what to think except, ‘Well, this is the governor of New York, and I’m here to do my job.”

Baggie said she has worked on laws covering immigration and abortion rights, but the work seems nowhere – with little explanation from the governor.

“Part of what makes Cuomo powerful is that no information is shared. It allows him to evade responsibility; nobody knows what’s really happening,” he told New York. “They are all around the advocates. They were roaming around and pretending to care, but nothing was found anywhere. It was just pretense, the veneer of governance. “

Dissatisfied, Baegi agreed for coffee with Democratic state Sen. Mike Giannaris, at which he discussed the possibility of Bayagi running the independent Democratic convention state Sen. Jeff Klein, who is affiliated with Senate Republicans.

When David found out about the meeting, Bagagie said he called her 20 times over the weekend, fishing aggressively for details such as “the continuation of the call was scary.”

David refused to make 20 calls to space in New York over the weekend.

After resigning from the Cuomo administration to begin his Senate campaign, Biaggi next encountered Cuomo at a wedding in 2018.

“He says, ‘Hi, Alessandra,’ pulls into me, and kisses my head twice and then my eye,” he recalled to New York. “He’s holding my arm, and he looks at my fiance and says, ‘Are you jealous?’

“I didn’t feel sexually harassed,” she said. “I felt like he’s trying to make me feel uncomfortable, to make me uncomfortable.”

The day before the general election – which Biagi will win – Cuomo calls her for a meeting and insists that she enter alone, leaving the two employees out.

According to Biaggi, Cuomo ended the meeting by asking, “Tell me again how your grandfather’s career ended?” “With reference to the late US rape. Mario Biaggi, who resigned in disgrace after being convicted in two separate trials.

“What is he telling me?” He remembered thinking in the moment. “He’s gonna send me to jail?” He is so powerful that he can end my career? “

Baggy said that Cuomo was fired at that meeting by Cuomo’s top aide Melissa Derasa, including many as an envoy to the governor, whose approval or disapproval could chart the course of Gubernatorial career.

Camoán Felix, who was hired as Cuomo’s first black female speechwriter in 2015, said she felt the toxicity of the work environment falling from top to bottom.

One day, Felix, who is also a member of Cuomo’s press team, made a mistake in a press release and was receiving profanity-laden dressing-downs from his boss, who Felix said was misbehaved by his own superiors. it was done.

“He called me and said, ‘What’s wrong with you? How much of a king can you be?” At first I thought,’ Oh, this must be how Cuomo talks to him. “Because it didn’t even make sense. . It doesn’t sound natural to this guy. Like, I don’t know where you got all that in your voice. “

More often, however, Felix stated that his work went unnoticed, using one of about 30 speeches or commentaries with Cuomo that he drafted for him.

“My desk was close to his office. He liked to see me, but he never even heard a word I said. “It is a very subtle form of racial abuse. … It looks good on paper, and we made sure to issue a press release. But you do not intend to involve me in the government. You like to show me to people. “

Cuomo’s office declined comment for The Post on the overall New York piece.

“There is no secret that these are tough jobs, and there is a demand for work, but we have a top tier team with many employees who have been here for years and many others who have left and returned because they know That we know the work we do, ”spokesman Rich Azzopardi told New York.

Additional reporting by Bernadette Hogan

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*