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‘Let’s play strip poker’: Fmr. Cuomo aide accuses NY governor of sexual harassment

Published

2 years ago

February 24, 2021

Staff Writer

UPDATED AT 3:52 PM (EST) TO INCLUDE STATEMENT FROM GOV. CUOMO’S OFFICE

In an essay, a former aide to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) on Wednesday accused him of sexually harassing her, alleging that the governor engaged in unwanted kissing and touching and that his top female staffers “normalized” his behavior.

Lindsey Boylan, who is currently running for Manhattan Borough President, back in December accused Cuomo of sexual harassment for making inappropriate remarks about her appearance but at the time did not elaborate on her experiences. She worked for the Cuomo administration from March 2015 to October 2018, first as executive vice president of Empire State Development and then as a deputy secretary for economic development and special adviser to the governor.

“Let’s play strip poker,” Boylan claimed Cuomo said on a flight from an event in October 2017, according to an essay she wrote on Medium that was published Wednesday.

In the essay, Boylan shares emails and screenshots of interactions, alleging that, shortly after an event in 2016, her former boss said that Cuomo had a “crush” on her.

Today I am telling my story. I never planned to share the details of my experience working in the Cuomo administration, but I am doing so now in hopes that it may make it easier for others to speak their own truth. https://t.co/n1Lcc6Ac66
— Lindsey Boylan (@LindseyBoylan) February 24, 2021

Boylan also writes that, during a one-on-one briefing at Cuomo’s Third Avenue office in New York City, the governor “kissed me on the lips” as she was departing.

Cuomo, according to local station WRGB via CNYCentral, told reporters that Boylan’s claims were “not true.”

Cuomo’s press secretary, Caitlin Girouard, in a statement to this reporter doubled down on denying Boylan’s claims, calling them “quite simply false.”

Challenging Boylan’s story about the October 2017 flight, citing records and statements, Girouard’s statement claimed that “there was no flight where Lindsey was alone with the Governor, a single press aide, and a NYS Trooper.”

The press secretary pointed to the manifests from that month, which documented Cuomo’s daily work and travel schedule as well as the list of people on that month’s flights.

Girouard also brought up a statement attributed to administration officials she said were all on these flights with Boylan—John Maggiore, Howard Zemsky, Dani Lever, and Abbey Fashouer Collins—saying: “We were on each of these October flights and this conversation did not happen.”

Boylan and the officials who Girouard named, according to the manifests, were on flights together during that October.

“The Governor’s behavior made me nervous,” Boylan said at another point in her blog post, “but I didn’t truly fear him until December 2016.”

That month, Boylan said the governor arranged through his “body person” to meet her in his Albany office, with her hesitantly agreeing to see him. She writes that as Cuomo was giving her an office tour, he “smirked” and showed off a cigar box he said former President Bill Clinton gave him when he served as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

“The two-decade old reference to President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky was not lost on me,” Boylan writes.

Additionally, Boylan said in her essay that when she joined Cuomo’s administration in 2015, a friend who served as an executive with an influential civic engagement organization warned her: “Be careful around the Governor.”

Boylan also alleged that Cuomo’s behavior “was all so normalized — particularly by Melissa DeRosa and other top women around him — that only now do I realize how insidious his abuse was.”

DeRosa has broken national headlines recently for privately admitting on a call with Democratic lawmakers, according to a February 11 New York Post report, that Cuomo’s administration withheld data about coronavirus-related deaths at New York nursing homes out of fear that it would be “used against us” by federal prosecutors.

In recent weeks, the administration revealed that 15,000 long-term care residents have died, up from the 8,500 previously disclosed, according to NBC News.

On March 25, when New York State found itself at the center of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, Cuomo ordered nursing homes to take in COVID-positive patients, which many have argued caused the thousands of coronavirus-related nursing home deaths. The order has since been rescinded.

Late last month, state Attorney General Letitia James (D) published a report showing that the number of nursing home deaths “may have been undercounted by as much as 50%.”

Currently, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn and the FBI are investigating the Cuomo administration’s handling of the nursing home death data.

Cuomo has denied the reports and accusations that his administration covered up the nursing home numbers, saying last Friday: “It is a lie to say any numbers were inaccurate. […] Total deaths were always reported to nursing homes and hospitals.”

You can follow Douglas Braff on Twitter @Douglas_P_Braff.

Featured

Gabbard ‘no greater expression of hatred..towards women than trying to erase us as a category of people’

Published

12 hours ago

March 28, 2023

Alexander Carter

Former Democratic Rep. of Hawaii Tulsi Gabbard, had no fear in expressing how she felt about the state of woke ideology after a biological male was given a courage award on International Women’s Day earlier this month. She called it delusional, stating these woke beliefs create hatred and hostility against women.

Gabbard brought up the fact that the “woman” who was honored in the White House was “not actually a woman at all.” She stated what everyone knew: it was a biological male who identifies as a woman.

In early March, on International Women’s Day Alba Rueda, a transgender woman who serves as Argentina’s special envoy for sexual orientation and gender identity, was given the White House award for being a woman of courage. The International Women of Courage Award ceremony hosted by first lady Jill Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken and it it reflects a growing woke ideology.

It wasn’t just the White House. USA Today also honored a biological male for ‘Woman of the Year.’ In fact, Minnesota Democratic State Rep. Leigh Finke was on the cover and “is the first openly transgender person to be elected to and serve in the Minnesota legislature,” as stated in reports. Finke was also named “Woman of the Year” for Minnesota despite serving in office for less than three months, according to Fox News.

Exactly 👇 https://t.co/7DW5jdr4c4

— Sara A. Carter (@SaraCarterDC) March 27, 2023

The Biden administration honored Rueda because of his courage. They said it was the courage of his transitioning and the struggles he endured. There are many biological females who endure great struggles and triumphs everyday but apparently the White House couldn’t find one to fit this category.

Gabbard brought up two major points on why this is so dangerous and disrespectful towards women.

First she stated, “there is no greater expression of hatred and hostility towards women then to try and erase us as a category of people and then to minimize us to being a construct of anyone imagination.” Her second point she stated was, “that by rejecting the objective truth, they are rejecting the existence of the objective truth as a whole.”

She is correct and one of the greatest manipulation tactics a government can use to subvert its citizens is to destroy the idea of the objective truth. A nation that is indoctrinated from the education system, to the t.v. shows we watch, to the movies that depict such lunacy and destroy the values and beliefs of a country will inevitably fall from chaos until a new regime takes over for the betterment of society.

This is exactly what we have seen in the past with examples such as the USSR, Cuba, Nazi Germany, and even the CCP today. Gabbard was a long standing Democrat who had to leave the party because she could see the direction they are heading. The woke ideology we are witnessing in the U.S. over the past 20 years is simply a subversion of our Democratic republic.

Yurie Bezmenov a Soviet journalist and former KGB office, who defected to Canada, gave a speech equally as riveting as Gabbard. In this speech he talks about the fall of Russia and the rise of the USSR. As a former KGB member he was a part of the subversion process. He understood what it took to shift the culture of a nation state.

In short, he explained that it only takes 15 years to indoctrinate a whole generation and to create an entire generation of sleeper cells who aren’t even aware that they are part of the subversion process.

This is what Tulsi is urging her listeners to truly understand. People must see beyond the idea that truth is merely a gray space -that it is no longer relevant and realize that this type of thinking is used to confuse and subvert the masses.

If there is nothing that is concrete and no truths that we can rely on then Gabbard is correct that women will be reduced to nothing and the years of fighting for what was once equity will vanish.

You can follow Alexander Carter on Twitter @AlexanderCarterDC