Chris Cuomo is telling people that he has evidence that the sexual assault allegation he is accused of at ABC is “false,” that he and the woman had a “friendly dynamic” and “nothing inappropriate” happened.
He’s doubling down on his claims that he was improperly fired by CNN, telling people that when the dust settles he will be demanding an apology from his old network as well as his former boss Jeff Zucker.
The anonymous allegations came from a lawyer representing a former colleague at ABC who alleged Cuomo assaulted her around 2011. The woman was a temporary employee who said Cuomo offered her lunch in his office and then demanded sex, forcing her to escape from the room.
Her lawyer, Debra Katz, made the allegations to CNN’s general counsel, adding that Cuomo allegedly later offered to do a CNN segment on her new employer at the time, “to use the proposed segment as an opportunity to ‘test the waters’ and discourage her from going on the record about his sexual misconduct,” Katz wrote CNN, according to an excerpt of the letter that appeared in the New York Times.
The timing of the segment could not be determined and Katz has said publicly it aired at the height of the #Metoo movement between 2017 and 2019. Katz didn’t return an email and telephone call for comment. Her client is said to want to remain anonymous. Sources close to Cuomo said he completely denies the assault, and that the story he did on her employer was a legitimate news story.
He also said that Zucker didn’t bring up the harassment allegation when he was fired. A spokesman for Cuomo declined to comment other than to say the allegations are false.
Cuomo is said to be incensed by leaks he believes comes from people in Zucker’s camp and CNN. Zucker said he didn’t know the scope of the advice he was giving to his brother Andrew, the former New York State governor who was also forced to resign over a sexual harassment scandal.
But Chris Cuomo has told people all his interactions with his brother during the final days of Andrew’s governorship were disclosed to Zucker.
The Cuomo-Zucker contretemps have upended management at CNN at a crucial time when it’s involved in a $43 billion merger and making a huge expansion into streaming. As The Post reported, Cuomo has told people he didn’t leak the years-long romantic affair between Zucker, and an underling, Allison Gollust, CNN’s former head of marketing and communications, that was said to be behind Zucker’s recent defenestration and now Gollust’s as well. Cuomo has told people he believes both got the ax from the scandal-tarred network because they stepped over the line much the way he allegedly did; evidence of their missteps emerged from an internal company investigation conducted by the law firm Cravath Swaine & Moore, which also uncovered the consensual affair between Zucker and Gollust.
Cuomo has told people both were advising Andrew on strategy in an effort to cozy up to the former governor when he was riding high during the early days of the COVID pandemic and his daily briefings were must-see TV. They pushed to have Andrew Cuomo appear in a series of softball interviews with Chris that received high ratings but were panned as journalistically dubious, he has said.
Cuomo’s lawyers have alerted CNN that they want to go to war with the network. They are preparing an arbitration claim seeking money from his $20 million contract and extracting an apology from CNN and possibly Zucker, according to people close to the matter. The claim could be filed imminently and Cuomo’s lawyers have indicated to CNN they plan on deposing Zucker and Gollust.
Cuomo has told people that as of now he won’t settle with the network without a statement that he did nothing wrong and the network and Zucker “lied’ about him in disclosing the reasons for his firing.
As the leaks pile up, the controversy is roiling CNN, casting doubt on its slogan “The Most Trusted Name In News,” and making its planned merger with Discovery Inc., even more fraught. Zucker was well liked by many of the network’s top talent, including at one time Cuomo, and many are outraged by his firing.
But executives at its parent the WarnerMedia subsidiary of AT&T were also vexed by the increasingly politicized tone of the content Zucker had been airing in recent years, the Post has learned. WarnerMedia is now being spun off into a separate company and merged with Discovery Inc., where one of its top shareholders, telecommunications legend John Malone also has been critical of the coverage.
That coverage brought in huge ratings as Zucker steered CNN further to the left and an aggressive critic of former President Trump. But with Trump out of office ratings have declined significantly. People who know Zucker say he has said he was going to pivot the programming more to the center just before he was ousted.
Meanwhile, as the Post has reported Zucker’s big push into streaming with CNN-plus has gotten off to a rocky start with company insiders conceding it will likely lose money for years, and that its programming is of such poor quality it is unlikely to generate much buzz. These people say the product will likely be scaled back once Discovery fully takes over in May when the merger closes.
A CNN spokesman didn’t return calls for comment.
A spokeswoman for Zucker did not return repeated calls for comment. Gollust could not be reached for comment, but in a statement, she told the Wall Street Journal that her firing was “attempt to retaliate against me and change the media narrative in the events of their disastrous handling of the last two weeks.”