Cuomo interferes with sexual harassment probe, Charlotte Bennett’s law firm says

Katz said that the determination to supply attorneys to staffers who accompany them to interviews “will have a chilling outcome on potential witnesses or other accusers” who want to cooperate with the probe but who “worry job-linked retaliation if they convey to the investigators about the Governor’s sexual harassing behavior and misconduct of people around him.”

Katz wrote that she has spoken to witnesses who concern retaliation if they refuse to cooperate with Cuomo’s attorneys. They also really feel constrained in what they can share with James’ investigator with those attorneys current, she mentioned.

“We believe that this give of counsel constitutes a deliberate endeavor by the Governor to interfere with your office’s investigation,” Katz wrote.

Cuomo’s press workplace and a lawyer lately employed by the governor did not straight away respond to requests for comment.

A spokesman for James explained Tuesday, “Survivors deserve to have their stories heard without interference. Our investigation will include things like a extensive and impartial examination of the points, interval.”

“We will proceed to perform diligently, and will publicly disclose our results so that there can be transparency and accountability devoid of any exterior influence in this make any difference,” the spokesman reported.

James has hired a crew of exterior attorneys to examine promises by Bennett and other ladies that Cuomo sexually harassed them or usually created inappropriate actual physical call or remarks. The accusers include things like previous staffers, like Bennett, and at least two latest staff members users.

Bennett, 25, has reported she believes the 63-calendar year-outdated governor was trying to have a sexual marriage with her when he asked her past 12 months about her intercourse existence, irrespective of whether she had at any time been concerned with an older person and other queries that manufactured her unpleasant.

Cuomo has denied performing inappropriately towards any girl.

In her letter to James, Katz also observed, as she had in a prior letter to the attorney general, that the Albany Instances Union not long ago documented that Cuomo experienced claimed that James had directed the Executive Chamber — Cuomo’s workplace and cabinet — to perform its personal inquiry into a claim that he aggressively groped a existing aide in the governor’s mansion last year.

Katz wrote that legal duty for investigating office harassment within just the Government Chamber belongs to the Governor’s Business office of Employee Relations. She stated that the Executive Department’s employee handbook expressly necessitates any sexual harassment complaint to be dealt with by GOER.

The attorney wrote that the report of the so-identified as parallel investigations by the Government Chamber, coupled with its failure to tackle Bennett’s allegations very last calendar year, “evidently demonstrates” the chamber’s “unwillingness to use the proper channels for reporting and investigating promises of sexual harassment.”

Katz asked James to problem a assertion saying that she was not built conscious of or experienced authorised the Executive Chamber’s investigation.

“Usually, this unauthorized parallel investigation will go on to undermine the legitimacy of the complete, independent investigation getting performed by your workplace,” Katz wrote.

The Periods Union wrote last week that Cuomo’s performing counsel Beth Garvey, in a statement to the newspaper, explained, “We completely informed the (legal professional general’s) business office of the expected system with this type of allegation and they claimed to comply with it. The subject was referred to GOER (Governor’s Place of work of Staff Relations) and (we) educated community regulation enforcement and that is the whole extent of the action.”

Cuomo has regularly refused to resign in spite of an rising range of allegations from him.

A the vast majority of New York’s Democratic congressional delegation customers, as perfectly as scores of Democrats in the condition legislature, have demanded that Cuomo resign.

The condition Assembly Judiciary Committee has opened an inquiry into no matter whether Cuomo should be impeached.