Governor Andrew Cuomo had someone else take his mandatory on-the-job training course for sexual harassment – after which he signed it as if he had taken it himself, prosecutor Charlotte Bennett said in a new interview aired Friday night.
Bennett also claims that one of the governor’s top assistants admitted to her last summer that he “cared” for her, but that the case did not need to be investigated further because Cuomo’s behavior did not go any further.
The 25-year-old former Cuomo assistant made the explosive revelations in an interview on CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell.
“Initially, they apologized, they said it was inappropriate,” she said at a June 30 meeting with Junomo’s special counsel Judith Mogul and his chief of staff, Jill DesRosiers.
“I asked them if they could let it go and said, ‘I do not want it to be investigated, please drop it,’ you know, because I was scared.
“She said, ‘You came to us before anything serious happened. It was just care, and it has not yet been considered sexual harassment, so we do not need to investigate, ” Bennett claims.
It was not clear if Bennett was referring to Mogul, Desrosiers or anyone else during the meeting.
Bomo also said that Cuomo had his official training taken for him.
“In 2019, he did not follow the training of sexual harassment,” Bennett told O’Donnell in the interview.
“How do you know that?” Ask O’Donnell.
“I was there,” replied Bennett, who was working for him at the time.
“I heard Stephanie say, ‘I can not believe I’m doing this for you,’ ‘Bennett recalls, referring to office director Stephanie Benton.
“I’m kidding about the fact that she completed the training for him,” Bennett recalls.
“And then I heard her at the end ask him to sign the certificate,” Bennett said.
Bennett’s explosive allegation that the governor had an assistant to complete his sex harassment training for him is contrary to what he said Wednesday.
Asked by a reporter if he had followed the required training, Cuomo simply said, “The short answer is yes.”
Benton, meanwhile, “categorically denies the exchange,” according to a statement from the governor’s office, adding: “this is not true,” CBS reported.
Also in the interview, Bennett said the governor instructed her to find him a girlfriend – a day later he impatiently asked if she did, a revelation that was teased in previews earlier Friday.
Meanwhile, on Friday, Debra Katz’s attorney for Bennett sent a letter to Attorney General Letitia James requesting that the AG provide evidence related to Bennett’s claims of sexual harassment by the governor’s office and senior staff are retained.
The urgency of Katz’s request “has been heightened by recent new reports that the governor’s staff has adjusted government reports on other matters,” the lawyer said in a press release.
It was an apparent reference to news from Thursday night that Cuomo’s top advisers had urged state health officials to omit the number of nursing homes killed in COVID-19 in hospitals from a public report.