Impeach Andrew Cuomo

Every now and then, it’s important to make blindingly obvious, ridiculously simple arguments. Here’s mine for today. New York Democrats should impeach Andrew Cuomo. Impeachment isn’t just deserved on the merits; it would also represent an important step towards reclaiming America’s institutional integrity and partisan responsibility. 

Earlier today, New York Attorney General Letitia James released the results of her investigation of multiple allegations of sexual harassment by the governor. Put simply, it’s devastating. In page after page, the report documents claims of misconduct that could even rise to the level of criminal behavior. 

For example, a woman identified only as “Executive Assistant #1” claims that on November 16, 2020, Cuomo “reached under her blouse and grabbed her breast.” She claims the governor “grabbed her butt” on multiple occasions. He also allegedly grabbed the buttocks of a woman known only as “State Entity Employee #1.”

(It should be noted that New York criminal law prohibits “forcible touching,” defined as when a person “intentionally, and for no legitimate purpose, forcibly touches the sexual  or other intimate parts of another person for the purpose of degrading or abusing such person; or for the purpose of gratifying the actor’s sexual desire.” Forcible touching is a Class A misdemeanor.)

Other alleged conduct falls under classic definitions of sexual harassment and constitutes behavior that—although it isn’t exactly a legal term of art—can only be described as creepy. Cuomo is described running “his finger down the center of Trooper #1’s back from the top of her neck down to the center of her spine while saying, ‘hey you.’” In another instance, he allegedly pressed and ran “his fingers across the chest [of] Virginia Limmiatis … while reading the name of her company (which was written across the chest).” 

And then there’s the kind of hostile environment he allegedly created for one of his aides, Charlotte Bennett:

Over the course of a number of conversations, the Governor made inappropriate and offensive comments of a sexual nature to Ms. Bennett, including: (1) in talking about potential girlfriends for him, telling her that he would be willing to date someone who was as young as 22 years old (knowing that she was 25 at the time); (2) asking her whether she had been with older men; (3) saying to her during the pandemic that he was “lonely” and wanted to be “touched;” (4) telling her that he wanted to ride his motorcycle into the mountains with a woman; (5) asking whether she was monogamous and what she thought about monogamy; (6) joking about the size of his hands; (7) telling her that she should get a tattoo on her butt where it could not be seen; and (8) asking whether she had any piercings other than in her ears. 

Cuomo also allegedly had numerous conversations with Bennett “about her experiences with sexual assault,” conversations that made her feel like he was “grooming” her.

I’m only describing a portion of the report. If you want to read about the details (including the corroborating evidence), I’d urge you to read the entire report. Cuomo, for his part, has denied wrongdoing. He released his own position statement in response, accompanied by a video statement that contained a remarkable slideshow of Cuomo hugging and touching colleagues and constituents. The written statement, meanwhile, took pains to demonstrate that other politicians touch people, too:

Notably, the collage did not include any examples of politicians grabbing people’s breasts or buttocks. Apparently this is not common enough conduct to compile.

So far, the Democratic response to the report has been encouraging. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on Cuomo to resign. So did Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. And as I typed this newsletter, President Joe Biden issued his own call for Cuomo to step down. All of that is important. All of that is welcome.

But what if Cuomo decides to stay? It will then be vital for New York Democrats to buckle down and impeach him. It’s imperative that they toss Cuomo from office. This is not just a matter of justice for the women he allegedly harassed; it’s a matter of important national hygiene.

I’m breaking no new ground when I say that America faces a crisis of trust in its institutions, especially its political institutions. I’m also breaking no new ground when I say that one of the reasons for that distrust is the almost total inability of partisan institutions to police themselves. Accountability only exists if the opposing party has the power to impose punishment. 

This is not entirely new. It took until the year 2020 for a single senator to cross the aisle and vote to impeach a president of his own party. Given this partisan loyalty, shameless politicians are increasingly adopting a single, simple tactic—weather the storm, and force your friends to throw you out. 

One could call this the Bill Clinton playbook, or the Ralph Northam maneuver, but the modern politician who perfected the art of simply staying put is Donald Trump. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he could count on the support of a party that would have voted to toss any Democrat out of office under remotely similar facts.

So, yes, I get it. If Democrats don’t ultimately impeach Cuomo, Republicans will be in no position to sit in judgment. But when it comes to restoring at least some measure of institutional accountability in American governance, somebody has to go first. Right now, that “somebody” should be the New York Democratic Party.

One more thing …

Every now and then you run across a truly extraordinary piece of journalism. I’ve been closely watching the spike in the American murder rate, and I’ve been dissatisfied by many of the easy explanations. Crime is an extraordinarily complex cultural phenomenon, and rarely do diagnoses of a crime rate’s rise or fall do justice to that complexity. This ProPublica report by Alec MacGillis is extraordinary for its stubborn refusal to be simple. (We also promoted the piece in The Morning Dispatch. It’s that good.) A sample:

This soaring toll, which is heavily concentrated in Black neighborhoods, has brought new urgency to understanding the problem. But the terrible experience of the past year and a half has also offered an opportunity to make sense of what drives gun violence, and how to deter it. The coronavirus pandemic, and the decisions that officials made in response to it, had the effect of undoing or freezing countless public and social services that are believed to have a preventative effect on violence. Removing them, almost simultaneously, created a sort of unintended stress test, revealing how essential they are to preserving social order.

The effect of this withdrawal was layered atop other contributing factors, such as criminal justice reforms in Philadelphia and other cities, and further deterioration of police-community relations in the wake of more high-profile deaths at police hands. Criminologists and city leaders across the country are now scrambling to disentangle these layers of causation as the spike carries on, turning a city such as Philadelphia into a sort of high-stakes laboratory.

Of course, for Philadelphians like Nakisha Billa, the city is not a laboratory. It is her home. The path the city has taken on public safety over the past two decades has been something palpable in her life, shaping it at every turn — and shattering it during the pandemic.

Please read it all. 

One last thing …

I’m not ending with a video today, just an image. No, not “just” an image. A wonderful image. A glorious image. Amazon’s announcement of the premiere date of its Lord of the Rings series. Tolkien geeks, what do you see? I think I know. 

Correction, August 3, 2021: An earlier version of this newsletter conflated the contents of Cuomo’s video and written statements. The written statement compared images of Cuomo hugging constituents with other politicians doing the same; the video statement solely showed images of Cuomo interacting with others.