Governor Andrew Cuomo has formally been accused of sexually harassing eleven women by New York’s Attorney General in a stunning string of allegations.
AG Letitia James claimed the embattled Empire State lawmaker was behind a concerted campaign of unwanted comments and touching spanning from 2013 to 2020, in a series of statements delivered Tuesday.
Cuomo was first accused of sexual misconduct last year, but Tuesday’s press conference named several new victims, and also detailed Cuomo’s nine previous accusers, whose testimony investigators said they found compelling.
The governor has furiously denied impropriety and refused to resign.
Here we take a detailed look at the women whose claims have triggered the biggest crisis of Cuomo’s three-term career:
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (pictured) has formally been accused of sexually harassing eleven women by New York’s Attorney general in a stunning string of allegations
State Trooper #1
Cuomo is accused of sexually harassed a state trooper, referred to in the report as Trooper #1, who he hired onto his protective detail, bending the three-year experience requirement.
Once she was on his team, he allegedly harassed her on a number of occasions, including one where he ran his hand across her stomach from her belly button to her right hip while she was holding the door open for him at an event.
‘I felt…completely violated because to me…that’s between my chest and my privates,’ the trooper said, according to Business Insider. ‘But, you know, I’m here to do a job.’
He also ran is accused ‘running his finger down her back’ while they were in an elevator together and saying ‘hey you’, and kissing her on the cheek in front of another trooper.
‘I remember just freezing, being—in the back of my head, I’m like, oh, how do I say no politely because in my head if I said no, he’s going to take it out on the detail. And now I’m on the bad list,’ the trooper shared.
Cuomo also allegedly asked her to help him find a girlfriend and said he wanted someone who ‘liked pain’, and asked her why she wanted to get married, saying ‘your sex drive goes down’.
‘Trooper #1 found these interactions with the Governor not only offensive and uncomfortable, but markedly different from the way the Governor interacted with members of the PSU who were men, and she conveyed these incidents contemporaneously to colleagues,’ the report reads.
The trooper said she was afraid of being retaliated against if she were to speak out against the behavior.
State Entity Employee #2
A doctor says she was sexually harassed while administering a televised COVID-19 test to Cuomo.
The doctor who administered a COVID-19 test to Cuomo she was sexually harassed during the incident.
On May 17, 2020 Cuomo told the medic, in front of cameras ‘nice to see you doctor, you make that gown look good’.
The doctor, who appeared in full PPE gear, did not respond to his comment.
Cuomo (left) is accused of sexually harassing the medic (right) while she administered him a COVID-19 test in front of cameras
Cuomo (left) allegedly made comments towards the medic (right) that were sexual in nature. He said: ‘Nice to see you doctor, you make that gown look good’
The report also claims that before the test, Cuomo asked her not to swab him so hard that it ‘hit his brain’.
She replied that she’d be ‘gentle but accurate’ and he said ‘I’ve heard that before,’ which the doctor said was ‘implied in a sexual nature’.
The medic considered the interaction to be sexual harassment and investigators agreed.
Another unnamed ‘state entity employee’
The unidentified employee, identified in the report as ‘State Entity Employee #1,’ said she attended an event with Cuomo in September 2019.
After giving a speech, Cuomo is said to have posed for pictures with her. While the picture was being taken, he ‘grabbed her butt’.
‘The employee was shocked and discussed it with a number of friends, family and co-workers,’ the report says.
She also ‘memorialized the Governor’s inappropriate touching’ contemporaneously, but the report doesn’t say how.
‘Executive Assistant One’
Cuomo is accused of groping an executive assistant, whose identity remains anonymous, at an event last November after routinely engaging in a pattern of impropriate conduct that began in late 2019.
The report says Cuomo repeatedly sexually harassed ‘Executive Assistant One’ when she worked for him by subjecting her to ‘close and intimate hugs’, ‘kisses on the cheeks and forehead’, ‘at least one kiss on the lips’ and ‘touching her butt’.
He allegedly referred to her and one other assistant as ‘mingle mamas’ and asked her repeatedly if she would ever cheat on her husband.
In November 2020, he allegedly groped her breast at the Executive Mansion in Albany.
‘For over three months, Executive Assistant #1 kept this groping incident to herself and planned to take it ‘to the grave,’ but found herself becoming emotional (in a way that was visible to her colleagues in the Executive Chamber) while watching the Governor state, at a press conference on March 3, 2021, that he had never ‘touched anyone inappropriately.’ She then confided in certain of her colleagues, who in turn reported her allegations to senior staff in the Executive Chamber,’ the report says.
The assistant was summoned to the mansion under the pretext of having to assist Cuomo with a technical issue involving his phone, the Times Union reported in March.
The two were alone together on the second floor of the residence when Cuomo allegedly closed the door, reached under the woman’s blouse and began to fondle her.
A source familiar with the incident told the newspaper that the victim had asked Cuomo to stop. This was allegedly the only time he touched her; all other instances involved flirtatious behavior.
Lindsey Bolan (pictured) was the first accuser to speak out publicly against Cuomo. She says he made inappropriate comments towards her and physically touched her on various parts of her body
Lindsey Boylan
Boylan, who was the first accuser to speak out publicly, that Cuomo made inappropriate remarks to her when she worked as Chief of Staff to the CEO of the Empire State Development Corporation including that he found her attractive and that he wanted to play strip poker.
She also says that he physically touched her on various parts of her body, including her waist, legs, and back.
She claims that once she reported her allegations, she was victimized by his team who ran a smear campaign against her while she ran for office.
The alleged harassment took place between 2015 and 2018.
Charlotte Bennett
Charlotte Bennett (left) worked briefly as a an aide for Cuomo (right). He allegedly asked her questions about if she’d date older men, asking her help to find a girlfriend, and apparently quizzing her on a sexual assault she had endured
Bennett worked briefly for Cuomo as an aide. She was a health policy adviser in the New York governor’s administration, hired in the spring of 2019 and swiftly promoted to senior briefer and executive assistant only a few months later.
AG Letitia James says her allegations that Cuomo harassed her with a series of comments are corroborated.
Among his alleged remarks are questions about if she’d date older men, asking her help to find a girlfriend, and apparently quizzing her on a sexual assault she had endured.
One of the other comments that he made was that he wanted to ride into the mountains with women.
Bennett had a friendly relationship with Cuomo due to their mutual ties to Westchester County, and saw him as a mentor.
In an interview earlier this year, Bennett said her first awkward conversation with Cuomo occurred on May 15, 2020.
The report included text messages between Charlotte Bennett and another aide, and conversations she had with her parents where she had she had a ‘great conversation’ with the ‘Governor’, and others where she says he made her feel uncomfortable.
‘The governor invited me to lift weights with him,’ she wrote in one message. ‘He challenged me to a push-up competition’.
She had told her parents how he was surprised to learn that she lifted weights and boxed, and that he had asked her to do push-ups in the office.
In another text chain she said Cuomo ‘talked about age difference in relationships,’ calling his comments ‘explicit’.
The report also included messages in which Bennett tells a confidant that she was incredibly uncomfortable following an interaction in the office. Bennett said she was ‘shaking’ and ‘so upset and so confused’.
In texts to another aide, Bennett said Cuomo repeated to her ‘over and over’ that she had been ‘raped’.
Cuomo was also recorded singing the popular 1960s love song Do You Love Me?, by the Contours, to Bennett during a phone call in 2019.
According to the New York Post, Bennett initiated the phone call saying, ‘Hi, governor. This is Charlotte’.
Cuomo allegedly answered the call with ‘Are you ready? Doo, doo, doo,’ and proceeded to ask her if she was familiar with the song.
Bennett told him the song was ‘before her time’.
Cuomo allegedly continued singing, ‘Do you love me? Do you really love me? Do you love me? Do you care?’
Virginia Limmiatis
Virginia Liammiatis worked for National Grid and was wearing a t-shirt with the company’s name written across her chest when she says she met Cuomo.
He ran his ‘two fingers across her chest, pressing down on each of the letters as he did so and reading out the name of the company as he went’.
The report says he then ‘leaned in, with his face close to her cheek, and said ‘I’m going to say I see a spider on your shoulder’ before brushing the area between her shoulder and her breasts’.
‘Ms. Limmiatis came forward in this investigation after she heard the Governor state, during the March 3, 2021 press conference, that he had never touched anyone inappropriately.
‘As Ms. Limmiatis testified to us, ‘He is lying again. He touched me inappropriately. I am compelled to come forward to tell the truth… I didn’t know how to report what he did to me at the time and was burdened by shame, but not coming forward now would make me complicit in his lie, and I won’t do it.”
Virginia Liammiatis (left), who worked for National Grid, accused Cuomo of touching her inappropriately by running his fingers across her chest. Alyssa McGrath (right), one Cuomo’s executive assistants, claimed he harassed her and regularly asked questions about her personal life
Alyssa McGrath
McGrath was another executive assistant who says Cuomo harassed her.
‘In his interactions with another executive assistant, Alyssa McGrath, the Governor made inappropriate comments and engaged in harassing conduct, including: regularly asking about her personal life, including her marital status and divorce; asking whether Ms. McGrath would tell on Executive Assistant #1 if she were to cheat on her husband—and whether Ms. McGrath herself planned to ‘mingle’ with men’.
‘Kaitlin’
Kaitlin – whose second name is not public – met the Governor in 2016 at a fundraising event where they were photographed together in a dance pose.
Afterwards, she was hired by him in a junior position but given a salary of $120,000 – a figure so high she says it was laughed at in her interview.
Alyssa Liss (pictured) worked in the Executive Chamber between 2013 and 2015, during which time she says the governor subjected her to sexual harassment that included being called ‘sweetheart’ and ‘darling’, and placing his hand around her lower waist
Ana Liss
Liss worked in the Executive Chamber between 2013 and 2015, during which time she says the governor subjected her to sexual harassment that included being called ‘sweetheart’ and ‘darling’, and placing his hand around her lower waist.
He also kissed her hands and cheek, she said.
Despite feeling uncomfortable, she says she did not report them because ‘for whatever reason, in his office the rules were different. It was just, you should view it as a compliment if the Governor finds you aesthetically pleasing enough, if he finds you interesting enough to ask questions like that.
‘And so even though it was strange and uncomfortable and technically not permissible in a typical workplace environment, I was in this mindset that it was the twilight zone and…the typical rules did not apply.’
Anna Ruch
Ruch was a guest at a wedding, as was the Governor, in 2019 when she says he put his hands on a section of her back that was exposed by a cut-out in her dress.
She grabbed his wrist to move it away and he responded by saying ‘wow, you’re aggressive,’ according to the report.
Cuomo then grabbed her face with both of his hands and said ‘can I kiss you?’
He was pictured kissing her cheek.
Anna Ruch (left) was a guest at a wedding, as was Cuomo (right), in 2019 when she says he put his hands on a section of her back that was exposed by a cut-out in her dress