(CNN)A report detailing the findings of an impeachment investigation into former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is expected to be released to the public in the coming days, according to three members of the New York State Assembly Judiciary Committee.
Members on Thursday and Friday reviewed the 45-page report detailing findings from the independent investigation into allegations against the Democratic former governor launched more than eight months ago. The report addresses topics including the sexual harassment allegations against Cuomo, discrepancies in reported deaths in nursing homes from Covid-19, Cuomo’s pandemic leadership book deal, claims of the executive chamber’s hostile work environment, and Cuomo’s level of cooperation with the committee investigators, according to one of the members, Michael Montesano, who spoke with CNN.
Montesano, a Republican from Long Island, said the report doesn’t read positively for Cuomo, calling it thorough and fact-driven with evidence too strong for the former governor to deny. Investigators draw definitive conclusions in the report that are “fair and adequate,” Montesano told CNN.
“It’s very fact-driven, OK, and we don’t make up the facts. They are what they are,” Montesano said. “You’ll see the level of detail and again, in my opinion, and what we have to back it up and that’s not political, that’s fact-driven.”
The former governor’s legal counsel asked the Assembly committee to allow them a preview of the evidence and report draft, which they have not received.
“The Assembly Judiciary Committee has chosen not to review their findings with us which is their prerogative, but it may once again result in a one-sided report,” Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said in a statement Friday.
Judiciary Committee Chair Charles Lavine declined to comment to CNN on whether the committee would accommodate the Cuomo team’s request.
The report’s release will come more than five months after State Attorney General Letitia James announced that her office’s investigation into Cuomo found he had sexually harassed 11 women. The former governor, who resigned shortly after James’ report was released, has repeatedly denied all of the allegations, saying he never touched anyone inappropriately, but acknowledged that some of his behavior made others uncomfortable.
Montesano told CNN that “the evidence against (Cuomo) was so overwhelming that he can’t step away from what it is,” particularly regarding staffer Brittany Commisso’s previously reported sexual misconduct allegations and those of a state trooper on Cuomo’s protective detail first identified in James’ report.
Committee member Phil Steck, a Democrat, similarly told CNN on Friday that the independent report “strongly corroborated” and provided additional evidence that supported the attorney general’s findings.
Steck added that the report makes clear the former governor “used his office for the purpose of writing a book to benefit himself.”
CNN has previously reported that Cuomo was expected to receive more than $5 million from his book “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic,” which was published in October 2020. Cuomo donated $500,000 from his book deal to the United Way of New York State for pandemic relief and vaccination efforts and put the remainder in a trust for his three daughters, Azzopardi previously said in a statement to CNN.
“On the issue of the book deal, it’s pretty clear that the governor was utilizing the executive chamber as a vehicle for writing a book for his own personal benefit,” Steck said.
In the statement Friday, Azzopardi said: “State employees volunteered to assist the governor with his book American Crisis and now the Assembly apparently wants to criticize them.”
Steck also said the report draws inferences between the timing of the book release and the discrepancy in fatality data as it related to Covid-19 in nursing homes at the time, a much-debated subject earlier this year when James’ office published a preliminary report that found the New York State Department of Health “undercounted” the Covid-19 deaths among nursing home residents. “Preliminary data obtained by OAG suggests that many nursing home residents died from COVID-19 in hospitals after being transferred from their nursing homes, which is not reflected in DOH’s published total nursing home death data,” a statement from James’ office said.
“I think you can certainly infer the political motive. … In the governor’s book, there’s a chapter on the nursing home, so they were trying to preserve the validity of their claims in the book by distorting the facts regarding nursing home deaths,” Steck said.
Committee members reviewed the report in a secure location with the sergeant-at-arms and staff present. Phones were not permitted in the room and members could not take a copy with them, according to Steck and Montesano.
Attorneys from Davis Polk & Wardwell were appointed independent investigators when the Assembly Judiciary Committee launched the impeachment investigation into the then-governor in March.
The investigation was suspended in August when Cuomo resigned, but Assembly leadership opted to allow the investigators to publish a report of their findings for the public.
