Cuomo won’t face charges for touching female trooper

By Michael R. Sisak | Associated Press

NEW YORK — Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo won’t look transgression charges aft a pistillate authorities trooper said she felt “completely violated” by his unwanted touching astatine an lawsuit astatine Belmont Park successful September 2019, a Long Island authoritative said Thursday.

Acting Nassau County District Attorney Joyce Smith said successful a connection that an probe recovered the allegations against Cuomo “credible, profoundly troubling but not transgression nether New York law.”

Smith opened the probe aft details of the brushwood appeared successful Attorney General Letitia James’ August study connected intersexual harassment allegations against Cuomo. The study chronicled accusations from 11 women and led to Cuomo’s resignation from office, though helium has attacked the findings arsenic biased and inaccurate.

Cuomo’s spokesperson Rich Azzopardi didn’t straight code Smith’s determination successful a connection released Thursday afternoon.

“With each passing day, it becomes much and much wide that the lawyer general’s study was the intersection of gross prosecutorial misconduct and an maltreatment of authorities powerfulness for governmental purposes,” Azzopardi said.

James’ study recovered that Cuomo sexually harassed astatine slightest 11 women successful usurpation of national and authorities civilian rights law. But she said pursuing imaginable transgression penalties would beryllium up to prosecutors.

According to the report, the trooper said Cuomo ran the thenar of his near manus crossed her abdomen, to her belly fastener and past to her close hip, wherever she kept her gun, portion she held a doorway unfastened for him arsenic helium near an lawsuit astatine Belmont Park connected Sept. 23, 2019.

Cuomo was astatine the state-owned racetrack, location to the past limb of equine racing’s Triple Crown, to interruption crushed connected a caller arena for the NHL’s New York Islanders. The arena, adjacent to the track’s main grandstand and paddock, opened past month.

The trooper, a subordinate of Cuomo’s information detail, told James’ investigators that Cuomo’s behaviour astatine the lawsuit made her consciousness “completely violated due to the fact that to me, similar that’s betwixt my thorax and my privates.”

James’ study said that though the trooper was upset by Cuomo’s unwanted touching, she did not consciousness she could bash thing astir it.

“I’m a trooper, recently assigned to the question team. Do I privation to marque waves? No,” she said, according to the report. “I’ve heard fearfulness stories astir radical getting kicked disconnected the item oregon transferred implicit similar small things. … I had nary plans to study it.”

The trooper told James’ investigators that what happened astatine Belmont Park was conscionable 1 of galore instances of Cuomo’s “flirtatious” and “creepy” behaviour toward her.

One time, successful an elevator, helium traced his digit from her cervix to her back, she said. Another time, helium asked to buss her successful the driveway extracurricular his Mount Kisco location and proceeded to peck her cheek, she said.

“I retrieve conscionable freezing, being — successful the backmost of my head, I’m like, oh, however bash I accidental nary politely?” she told investigators.

The Nassau County probe was constricted to the brushwood astatine Belmont Park, which is connected the county’s borderline with New York City. Authorities successful different parts of the authorities person been looking into different allegations successful James’ report.

In October, the Albany County sheriff’s bureau filed a misdemeanor groping ailment against Cuomo, but a week aboriginal the territory lawyer asked a justice for much clip to measure the evidence.

The D.A. said that the sheriff’s one-page transgression complaint, based connected allegations from a pistillate who said Cuomo slid his manus up her blouse and grabbed her bosom astatine the governor’s mansion successful precocious 2020, was “potentially defective.”

At the prosecutor’s request, a tribunal delayed Cuomo’s scheduled arraignment until Jan. 7.

Following the merchandise of James’ report, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a civilian enquiry successful August into intersexual harassment claims made against Cuomo. The nonstop quality of the enquiry and its existent presumption is unclear.

Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo and Marina Villeneuve contributed to this report. Follow Michael Sisak connected Twitter astatine twitter.com/mikesisak