NY Times: 4 of Gov. Cuomo’s accusers subpoenaed by attorney general

The New York Times reported that the attorney general's investigation into the behavior of Gov. Andrew Cuomo is progressing.

News 12 Staff

May 15, 2021, 9:13 PM

Updated 1,149 days ago

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The New York Times reported that the attorney general's investigation into the behavior of Gov. Andrew Cuomo is progressing.
Four women who have accused the governor of sexual harassment have been interviewed by lawyers before, but the report says they are now being subpoenaed to testify under oath.
Richard Klein is an attorney and professor at Touro Law School. He said this is an expected next step.
"If the attorney general is going to issue any type of report that is based on the allegations made against Cuomo, you have to have those women who are making those allegations speak to the attorney generals attorneys under oath," Klein said.
As lawyers try to determine if Gov. Cuomo broke any laws or tried to interfere with the investigation, Klein said there will likely be more subpoenas issued, and the report may not be released for months.
"I don't think it will be before then if they are just now subpoenaing these four critical witnesses," Klein said.
It could be a while before the Assembly's investigation into Gov. Cuomo concludes as well.
Assemblyman Michael Montesano said he's been told that a lot of progress has been made recently and is expecting an update soon.
"Up to this moment, I've been somewhat optimistic to the speed, but it's getting to the point that they need to pick up the pace," Montesano said.
If the update is not as significant as expected, they will have evaluate the speed of the investigation, as concerns have been raised the Democrat-led Assembly is moving slow to buy the governor more time as he faces repeated calls to resign.
In an effort to save money and time, lawyers for the attorney general’s office and the Assembly are working together — sharing documents, information and interviews with witnesses.
"We don't want to subject the people to multiple interviews. It's very emotional, it's very stressful, it's very time consuming," Montesano says.
As for Gov. Cuomo, he's remained largely silent about the accusations, saying he'll wait for the release of the attorney general's report before sharing his side of the story.
Montesano said he is pushing for more of the interviews to take place in person. Most have been occurring on Zoom, and he's had concerns about hacking and people recording the sessions.


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