A New York State trooper who previously accused then Gov. Andrew Cuomo of harassing her while she was assigned to his protective detail filed a lawsuit Thursday, alleging Cuomo violated her rights before his long-time aide tried to cover up the incident.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in the Eastern District of New York, alleges that Cuomo and top aide Melissa DeRosa “violated federal, state, and civil laws” when they attempted to cover up the sexual harassment the trooper endured in 2019. The woman, who is only identified as “Trooper 1” in the lawsuit, is seeking damages from the pair.
Among the acts of sexual harassment and worse described in the lawsuit include Cuomo kissing her on the cheek, putting his hands down her back, and touching “her in intimate locations between her breasts and vagina.”
ADVERTISEMENT
The lawsuit alleges that just a few days after the last assault, Cuomo asked the trooper if she could help him find a girlfriend.
In March 2020, the lawsuit states that after Cuomo tried to hug and kiss her, the Trooper was forced to make a joke asking “You don’t have COVID, do you?” in an attempt to deter the governor.
The allegations mirror those detailed in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ 2021 investigation, which found that Cuomo sexually harassed at least 11 women and fostered a “hostile” and “unsafe” work environment that repeatedly covered up his “pattern of inappropriate conduct.” However, the probe concluded that Cuomo’s actions did not call for criminal litigation—a conclusion several other district attorneys came to after opening their own investigations into some of the incidents.
The Nassau County District Attorney previously declined to prosecute the trooper’s case, calling the allegations “credible, deeply troubling, but not criminal under New York law.” Last month, the Oswego County District Attorney’s Office dismissed the final criminal case against Cuomo, stating that the allegations brought by a National Grid employee did not have “sufficient legal basis to bring criminal charges.”
Cuomo, who left office last year amid pressure to quit over the report, has steadfastly denied or tried to explain the incidents away as misunderstandings.
“I never touched anyone inappropriately or made inappropriate sexual advances. I am 63 years old, I’ve lived my entire adult life in public view. That is just not who I am and that’s not who I have ever been,” Cuomo said after the AG’s report was released.
But the trooper’s lawsuit alleges that Cuomo was sneaky in the way he lured women, stating that he “wanted hugs…kisses…and to talk about sex” before eventually harassing them. If the women were to complain, they were allegedly “attacked by a cadre of the Governor’s closest advisors.”
“Among other things, the Governor’s protectors described one of his accusers as ‘crazy’ and planned to shut her down; pressured former subordinates to secretly record the Governor’s accusers in the hopes of getting information to use against the victims (and then promptly destroyed the evidence when the recordings proved unhelpful); distributed disparaging confidential personnel information to the press to attack one of the victims; drafted an ‘attacking’ and ‘victim shaming’ letter responding to sexual harassment allegations; and improperly ‘screen[ed]’ allegations against the Governor to avoid investigation,” the lawsuit states.
While several women have publicly spoken out about the harassment they allegedly endured at the hands of the former Democratic lawmaker, the trooper’s allegations appear to be uniquely brazen.
The investigation found that Cuomo took deliberate steps to ensure the trooper was moved onto his Protective Services Unit in the first place, even though she did not have the traditionally required experience for the prestigious role.
“They changed the minimum from 3 years to 2. Just for you,” a senior member of the trooper’s team told her in a 2017 email.
Excited to join the “elite detail” of the New York State Police in 2018, the trooper was initially assigned to protect Cuomo at his home in Mount Kisco, the lawsuit notes. There, the governor began to ask her questions about her personal life “while she was on duty.”
Eventually, the trooper alleges, Cuomo’s comments “became increasingly sexual.” He often asked her about her relationships and whether she ever planned to get married. Despite the uncomfortable conversations that even Cuomo asked her to keep quiet, the trooper began to travel with the governor before eventually joining his travel team.
The lawsuit states that during one visit to his New York City office, Cuomo “placed a finger on Trooper 1’s neck and ran it slowly down her spine to the middle of her back.”
“Trooper 1 could feel the Governor’s finger touch her bra clasp. As he did so, he stated, ‘Hey you,’” the lawsuit states.
On another occasion in the summer of 2019, Cuomo even asked the trooper if he could kiss her to which she replied in the affirmative out of fear offending him would “jeopardize her employment.”
“The Governor then kissed her on the cheek while acknowledging that it was against the rules for him to do so,” the lawsuit states.
A few weeks later, on Sep. 23, 2019, the trooper accompanied Cuomo to an event at the Belmont racetrack. The lawsuit states that as the trooper walked ahead of Cuomo to hold a door open for him, “the Governor placed the palm of his hand on her belly button and slid it across her waist to her right hip, where her gun was holstered.”
“Trooper 1 felt violated as the Governor intentionally touched her in intimate locations between her breasts and vagina,” the lawsuit alleges.
By late 2020, however, women were going public with allegations of sexual harassment against Cuomo. The lawsuit alleges that after a reporter began to poke around about the trooper’s position on the detail, DeRosa became specifically involved in hiding Cuomo’s behavior—yelling at the editor of the newspaper and accusing him “of being sexist for even making the inquiry.”
Cuomo’s spokesman Rich Azzopardi said in a statement Thursday that the lawsuit relies on “the AG’s proven fraud of a report, as demonstrated by the five district attorneys who, one by one – Democrat and Republican – looked at its findings and found no violations of law.”
“If kissing someone on the cheek, patting someone on the back or stomach or waving hello at a public event on New Year’s Eve is actionable then we are all in trouble,” he said. “...Gov Cuomo will fight every attempt at cheap cash extortions and is anxious to have the dirty politics stop–we look forward to justice in a court of law.”
