Former aide says Cuomo kissed her, suggested strip poker

[SouthBayDem]

39. Yes, these details ARE gross, but...

Keep in mind what Boylan tweeted back in December in that Twitter thread.

She said: "...[Cuomo] sexually harassed me for years. Many saw it, and watched."

Link to tweet

Yet since then, no one has come forward to corroborate such a claim.

Back then, she also tweeted: "I have no interest in talking to journalists."

Link to tweet

I wonder why two months later she'd suddenly come out with more explicit details.

Furthermore, this AP story suggests that Boylan is full of shit:

During an October 2017 flight, she said Cuomo said, “Let’s play strip poker” as they sat with a press aide and a state trooper. She said she brushed it off by sarcastically saying, “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” but privately found the comment upsetting.

The governor’s office confirmed that Boylan flew with Cuomo on four occasions that month, but that other aides present disputed the account.

“We were on each of these October flights and this conversation did not happen,” said a statement attributed to former senior adviser John Maggiore, former Empire State Development CEO Howard Zemsky, former Cuomo press secretary Dani Lever and former first deputy press secretary Abbey Fashouer Collins.

And good thing the AP also brought up this inconvenient fact about Boylan:

Personnel memos written in 2018, obtained by the AP, indicate Boylan resigned after she was confronted about complaints she belittled and yelled at her staff.

The Albany Times-Union reported back in December:

The Times Union interviewed three women who worked in the executive chamber for Cuomo for more than 15 years combined, but have each since left. They were reached out to independently by the newspaper; they spoke on the condition of anonymity as they weren’t familiar with Boylan’s specific claims of being personally harassed, but they said the culture described by Boylan did not match their own experiences working for Cuomo.

“I never once saw him berate or treat a staffer in a way that was unbecoming. I just never saw it. And to me … there’s a lot of things that could be said about the governor, but sexual harassment, it just boggles my mind,” said the first, who worked in a manager-level role for a number of years.

Meanwhile, WCBS television in NYC also reported a former Cuomo staffer (from his time as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Bill Clinton) made accusations not about sexual misconduct but simply about Cuomo being a bully:

One salvo came from Karen Hinton, de Blasio’s former press secretary, who wrote of working for Cuomo in 1995 when he was the federal housing secretary.

“He made me feel as if I were no good at my job and thus totally dependent on him to keep it,” Hinton wrote, adding, “… working for him is like a 1950s version of marriage. He always, always, always comes first. Everyone and everything else — your actual spouse, your children, your own career goals — is secondary. Your focus 24 hours a day is on him.”

So I do find it credible - based on what I've seen from Cuomo in his press conferences - that the guy could be a jerk or pushy. But Boylan, to me, seems to be someone with a vendetta against Cuomo based on the way she lost her job with the governor's office, her background as a failed congressional candidate, and her ever changing story.