march 6, 2021| 10:35 p.m
Two more former aides alleged sexual misconduct against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Saturday.A former press aide to the governor, Karen Hinton, told The Washington Post that Cuomo summoned her to his “dimly lit” hotel room and embraced her twice after a work event in 2000.
Hinton said she pulled away from Cuomo and he pulled her back toward his body, holding her in embrace before she backed out of the room.
Peter Ajemian, Cuomo’s director of communications, aggressively denied the allegations in a statement to The Post.
“This did not happen,” he said. “Karen Hinton is a known antagonist of the Governor’s who is attempting to take advantage of this moment to score cheap points with made up allegations from 21 years ago. All women have the right to come forward and tell their story — however, it’s also the responsibility of the press to consider self-motivation. This is reckless.”
In response to the Cuomo office’s denial, Hinton said “attacking the accuser is the classic playbook of powerful men trying to protect themselves.”
At the same time, another former aide, Anna Liss, said that when she worked for Cuomo as a policy and operations aide from 2013 to 2015, the governor asked her if she had a boyfriend, touched her on her lower back and kissed her hand as she rose from her desk.
Liss said she initially thought Cuomo’s flirtations were harmless, but over time came to see them as patronizing. She said it diminished her from an educated professional to “just a skirt.”
In response to Liss’ account, Cuomo spokesperson Richard Azzopardi told The Wall Street Journal: “Reporters and photographers have covered the governor for 14 years watching him kiss men and women and posing for pictures. At the public open-house mansion reception, there are hundreds of people, and he poses for hundreds of pictures. That’s what people in politics do.”
Lindsey Boylan, the first woman publicly to come out and allege the governor of repeated sexual misconduct, said she is “very proud” of Liss for coming forward.
“I am very proud of Ana Liss. She is brave and she speaks for me too,” she wrote on Twitter. “‘I just wish—I wish that @NYGovCuomo took me seriously,’ she said. It’s extremely destructive that our boss, the governor of New York, treated us this way.”
Meanwhile, two male aides told The Post that the governor routinely used explicit language to berate them, calling them “pussies” and saying, “You have no balls.”
