New York Governor Andrew Cuomo refused to resign on Tuesday and is contesting a damning report from AG Letitia James which found he did sexually harass 11 women, claiming it omits facts and is a political attack on him despite growing calls to step down and the increasing likelihood of impeachment.

James released her long-awaited report into the allegations against embattled Cuomo on Tuesday morning. It says he sexually harassed 11 women including some whose allegations were not previously known, like two state troopers and an executive assistant who says he groped her breast at the Governor’s mansion in Albany in November 2020.

James said all of the allegations are corroborated but she has not recommended any criminal charges against him, saying the scope of her work didn’t include prosecution.

There has since been an onslaught of calls for him to resign afterwards on both sides of the aisle, including from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio who went as far as to call for him to be impeached.

There has been no comment from the White House, despite President Biden saying in March that Cuomo should resign and be arrested if the report substantiates the women’s allegations.

In his address, Cuomo he said he is a ‘warm’ person who sometimes ‘slips’ and calls women who work for him ‘sweetheart and darling’, but insisting he has never been predatory or physical in his interactions with staffers.

His attorney has also released an 85-page rebuttal to the report which she says she will continue to update.

‘Even on a quick first review, it is clear that the report purposefully omits key evidence,’ said Cuomo’s attorney Rita M. Glavin.

In his televised address, Cuomo used a slideshow of images of him hugging and kissing people throughout his life to demonstrate what he described as an affectionate and tactile personality, that he says the women have confused for a sexual predator.

Scroll down for video 

‘This has been a long and painful period for me and my family as others feed stories to the press. I never touched anyone inappropriately. The facts are much different to what has been portrayed.

‘I am 63 years old. I have lived my entire adult life in public service. That is just not who I am or who I ever have been,’ he said.

He went on: ‘Trial by newspaper and biased reviews are not the way to find the facts. I welcome the opportunity for a full and fair review before a judge and jury because this just did not happen.’

President Biden – who said in March that Cuomo should resign if the report finds the allegations true – is yet to comment but while speaking with Latino leaders in the State Dining Room of the White House said: ‘I’m going to be speaking on COVID at 4 o’clock and will take questions on COVID and other issues after that.’

He had been asked if Cuomo should resign.

In his rebuttal, Cuomo said he’d never sexually harass anyone, much less a sexual assault survivor like Charlotte Bennett – one of the accusers – claiming he has helped a female relative overcome sexual abuse himself.

He said that the women invariably misinterpreted his ‘warm’ gestures like hugs and kisses, or misunderstood compliments.

After he spoke, critics renewed calls for him to resign and some suggested he should be impeached.

‘My first thoughts are with the women who were subject to this abhorrent behavior, and their bravery in stepping forward to share their stories.

‘The Attorney General’s detailed and thorough report substantiates many disturbing instances of severe misconduct. Andrew Cuomo committed sexual assault and sexual harassment, and intimidated a whistleblower.

‘It is disqualifying.

‘It is beyond clear that Andrew Cuomo is not fit to hold office and can no longer serve as Governor.

‘He must resign, and if he continues to resist and attack the investigators who did their jobs, he should be impeached immediately,’ NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement.

New York Senate Minority and Majority Leaders both called for him to resign.

‘The Attorney General’s report clearly and concisely documents that Governor Cuomo engaged in disturbing and unacceptable behavior.

‘Andrew Cuomo lacks the integrity required to be the leader of our state and can no longer serve as New York’s Governor.

‘He must heed the calls of so many New York leaders and resign,’ Senate Minority Leader Michael Gianaris said.

Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins said: ‘This report highlights unacceptable behavior Cuomo and his administration. The Governor must resign for the good of the state.

‘Now that the investigation is complete, and the allegations have been substantiated, it should be clear to everyone that he can no longer serve as Governor.’

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) released a joint statement calling for Cuomo’s resignation.

‘As we have said before, the reported actions of the Governor were profoundly disturbing, inappropriate and completely unacceptable. Today’s report from the New York State Attorney General substantiated and corroborated the allegations of the brave women who came forward to share their stories — and we commend the women for doing so.

‘The New York State Attorney General has conducted an independent, thorough and professional investigation that found the Governor violated state and federal law, had a pattern of sexually harassing current and former employees, retaliated against at least one of the accusers and created a hostile work environment.

‘No elected official is above the law. The people of New York deserve better leadership in the governor’s office. We continue to believe that the Governor should resign.’

The 168-page report by James’ office finds that Cuomo fostered a ‘toxic work environment’ where women were punished for reporting their allegations. It says that instead of dealing with the complaints properly, the women were simply moved out of his orbit, into different departments.

The report cites ‘relevant laws’ as Employer Liability and Executive Chamber Policy.  The Governor, who has always denied the allegations, is yet to respond to the report’s findings.

Among the allegations which the report says are true is that he sexually harassed a state trooper by running his ‘finger from her neck down her spine’ while they were sharing an elevator and saying ‘hey you’.

He is also said to have rubbed a state employee’s stomach, ran his finger across the chest of another woman, and engaged in ‘widespread pattern’ of subjecting women to ‘unwanted hugs’.

The report concludes: ‘The Governor sexually harassed a number of State employees through unwelcome and unwanted touching, as well as by making numerous offensive and sexually suggestive comments.

‘We find that such conduct was part of a pattern of behavior that extended to his interactions with others outside of State government.’

Non-consensual touching, repeatedly made comments of a sexualized, gender based nature. Cuomo was grilled for 11 hours as part of the investigation.

During questioning, the report says he ‘did not dispute that he sometimes commented on staff members’ appearance and attire (although generally only to compliment), and stated that, being “old fashioned,”.

He said he uses terms like ‘honey’, ‘sweetheart’ and ‘darling’ and that he regularly gave women hugs and kisses – sometimes on the lips.

BOMBSHELL REPORT TEXTS, INSTAGRAM SELFIES AND EMAILS REVEAL CUOMO ASKED AIDES TO LEARN SONG LYRICS TO ‘DANNY BOY’, SANG TO CHARLOTTE BENNETT DOWN THE PHONE AND SAID HE WOULDN’T DATE CHELSEA HANDLER ‘BECAUSE SHE’S NUTS’  

Appendices to NY AG Letitia James’ report reveal a trove of text messages, selfies and emails between accusers which helped investigators reach their finding that he sexually harassed 11 women.

Those include 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.

Others include emails from some of Cuomo’s staff, including one with a tweet by one of his accusers which shows her support of Cuomo.

The aide sent it to an AP reporter in an apparent attempt to discredit the accuser.

The investigators also included an Instagram selfie where Bennett also boasted: ‘The governor invited me to lift weights with him.

‘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.

Elsewhere, current aides discuss their strategy on how to respond to the allegations and they used Joe Biden’s response to his accuser, Tara Reade.

They also discussed an op-ed that Cuomo wanted to write to discredit Boylan, one of the accusers, and said of one woman’s allegation: ‘This doesn’t pass the smell test’.

It was a reference to Anna Ruch and her complaint about Cuomo grabbing her face and kissing her on the cheek at a wedding in 2019.

In texts to another aide, Bennett said Cuomo repeated to her ‘over and over’ that she had been ‘raped’.

The appendices also reveal that Cuomo, 63, asked Bennet to memorize the lyrics to the song Danny Boy and once sang the 1950s hit ‘Do You Love Me’ down the phone to her.

The emails from Cuomo’s team show that they downplayed the allegations, with one saying that Cuomo, who is Italian American, trying to kiss a young woman at a wedding ‘isn’t even a thing – (it) sounds like every Italian grandad at a wedding’.

The devastating report revealed that Cuomo, a prominent Democrat once tipped for the Presidency, sexually harassed at least 11 women including a state trooper assigned to protect him.

The third term governor, who Joe Biden considered to be his Attorney General, created a ‘hostile and toxic work environment’ which enabled his ‘deeply disturbing’ pattern of conduct which included unwanted kissing, groping and suggestive comments.

The appendices to the report appear to include notes taken by investigators interviewing Bennett.

They show that on June 5th last year Bennett had a discussion with Cuomo where they began talking about relationships

The notes state that Cuomo ‘brought up his ex – he said Sandy (Sandra Lee) was not talking to him’ – the couple had ended their eight-year relationship in 2019.

Cuomo said he was ‘lonely, that he was not sleeping well, he was looking for a girlfriend’. Cuomo told Bennett she was ‘in charge of finding him a girlfriend’.

At the time Cuomo was winning national plaudits for his handling of the pandemic and his daily press conferences which would later win him an Emmy.

But according to the notes, Bennett recalled that Cuomo ‘wants to get drunk and get on his motorbike and take a woman into the mountains and forget about the pandemic for a few hours’.

When the conversation returned to finding the governor a girlfriend, Bennett ‘didn’t know what to say’ so she suggested Jada Pinkett Smith and Chelsea Handler.

The notes say: ‘He said CH (Handler) was crazy’.

Another section of notes says that Cuomo dismissed the two women because ‘Jada is married and Chelsea is nuts’.

Ironically Handler, 46, has said she had a crush on Cuomo but that it ended when he was accused of sexual misconduct.

Handler has said ‘in the pandemic, I was very turned on by his morning news conferences, as many of us were’.

They had a ‘couple of conversations’ but Cuomo never followed through on Handler’s offer to go for a drink when he was in New York.

Pinkett Smith, 49, who is married to actor Will Smith, has admitted that Cuomo was her ‘celebrity crush’ and last year said that she ‘doesn’t miss a press conference’ about the pandemic, though her feelings appear to have gone nowhere.

The notes from the Cuomo report reveal that his conversation with Bennett took a darker tone when the governor said that the only criteria for a prospective girlfriend was that they should be over 22 years of age.

At that point Bennett realized that Cuomo was ‘grooming’ her and became extremely uneasy.

The report contains a transcript of an October 4 2019 phone call between Cuomo and Bennett in which he calls her ‘hun’ and sings to her.

Cuomo sings: ‘Are you reaaaaaady? do do do do do do do do’.

When Bennett says she doesn’t know the song, Cuomo says it is ‘before her time’.

Cuomo sings: ‘Do you love me, do you really love me? Do you love me, do you care?’

Cuomo says that the song is ‘like a 50’s, it’s before even my time’

The investigators behind the report have said that they found the accusers ‘credible’ and released dozens of Bennett’s contemporaneous texts messages sent by Bennett to back up her claims,

In one exchange with what appears to be a friend, Bennett writes that she is ‘GOING TO BURST INTO TEARS’ after an apparent incident with Cuomo.

Other messages show Bennett’s response to Cuomo’s statement following similar allegations by Lindsey Boylan.

Bennett appears to write that it ‘left me with a pit in my stomach’ and Cuomo’s statement was ‘gross’ and left her ‘SO mad’.

She writes: ‘You creep…it’s such b*******’

In other messages which appear to be to another Cuomo staffer Bennett writes: ‘He only spoke to me twice today and both times it was to tell me he didn’t like how I did my hair’.

Another section of the report deals with the fallout from the allegations made by Anna Ruch, who claimed that Cuomo kissed her against her will on her cheek at a wedding in 2019.

Cuomo PR adviser Lis Smith says in an email that ‘in front of dozens of people and with cameras around? At a wedding? This doesn’t pass the smell test’

In a follow up email Smith says: ‘This also isn’t even a thing – sounds like every Italian grandad at a wedding’.

As Cuomo’s team scrambled to respond to the mounting allegations, they circulated a statement put out by Joe Biden’s team in response to allegations of sexual assault by Tara Reade.

They also tried to get together a letter signed by dozens of women who had worked with Cuomo saying he had been a good boss but appeared to struggle to get enough people to sign on.

THE 11 WOMEN CUOMO HARASSED WITH UNWANTED TOUCHING, KISSING, INAPPROPRIATE COMMENTS AND RETALIATION 

‘Executive Assistant One’ 

The report says Cuomo groped ‘Executive Assistant One’ repeatedly sexually harassed her 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,”4 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.

State Trooper #1 

The report says Cuomo sexually harassed a state trooper, referred to as Trooper #1, who he hired onto his protective detail, bending the three-year experience requirement.

Once she was on his team, he allegedly ‘sexually harassed her on a number of occasions’ by ‘running his hand across her stomach  from her belly button to her right hip while she held a door open for him at an event’, ‘running his finger down her back’ while they were in an elevator together and saying “hey you”, kissing her on the cheek.

He 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.

Charlotte Bennett, 2020 

Bennett worked briefly for Cuomo as an aide.

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.

State Entity Employee #1

The unidentified employee 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.

State Entity Employee #2  – Doctor who gave Cuomo his COVID test on camera

One of the women whose allegations were corroborated was the doctor who performed his COVID-19 test at one of his March 2020 press conferences.

She says that when he told her, in front of cameras ‘nice to see you doctor, you make that gown look good,’ it was sexual harassment.

The investigators agreed. They also said that before the test, he 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’.

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.”’

Lindsey Boylan

Boylan says 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.

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.

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.