Disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is reportedly under federal investigation related to the claims of sexual harassment which forced him out of office. This has been a bad week for Cuomo, whose brother Chris was suspended indefinitely from CNN for attempting to help the governor cover up the allegations before his resignation. The Department of Justice is also investigating Cuomo for his handling of the pandemic and the nursing home deaths scandal.
Cuomo faces federal investigation
Andrew Cuomo was a great favorite of the mainstream media when the pandemic began, a favoritism aided by the fact that his brother was one of their own at CNN.
Now both Cuomo brothers have lost their jobs and Andrew faces serious legal trouble relating to, among other potential crimes, his pandemic related decisions.
The elder Cuomo is accused of sexually harassing 11 women. Given that most of this behavior occurred with his subordinates while he was in office the federal government is reportedly investigating him for civil rights and labor law violations.
Cuomo’s people continue to argue that the allegations are a politically motivated invention of state Attorney General Letitia James, who is now running for governor.
Chris Cuomo was fired from his CNN job after James released new documents showing that he had been collaborating with the governor’s staff to find information which might undermine new accusers.
CNN had refused to turn against him until that newly released information made it impossible to claim that he could still claim to be sticking to basic journalistic ethics (not that anyone else at CNN cares about those).
Former governor trapped in multiple scandals
The federal investigation will reportedly also focus on two major scandals which have the potential to be even more damaging for the former Cuomo administration than the sexual harassment charges.
The first relates to the question of whether or not Cuomo illegally employed state resources to publish and promote his memoir, which boasted about his handling of the pandemic.
The second is related even more directly to that handling of the pandemic. Cuomo is accused of intentionally misleading the public by covering up nursing home Covid deaths.
This portion of the federal investigation should be particularly damaging given that Cuomo cultivated a reputation among friendly media for being exceptionally competent in his handling of the pandemic.
If the probe shows that he was indeed manipulating death figures to make himself look better then it ought to be just as damning for the journalists who praised him without bothering to ask any questions.
Some New York legislators have decried the fact that Cuomo is not being forced to fund lawyers for the state in connection to the investigation with his own money.