Cuomo Accuser Comes Forward, Details Alleged Misconduct in Public for the First Time
The woman who has filed a criminal complaint against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the time has come for Cuomo to be held accountable.
Brittany Commisso was previously identified only as “Executive Assistant #1” in the report released by the New York State Attorney General’s Office last week that found Cuomo had sexually harassed 11 women. Cuomo denies all the allegations.
During an interview on “CBS This Morning” that was released Monday, Commisso said what she thought was a “dream job” “turned into a “nightmare.”
Commisso, 32, described herself as not just “Executive Assistant #1,” as she is referred to in the report about Cuomo, but as a mother and daughter, a colleague to others.
“I am more than ‘Executive Assistant #1,” she said.
Commisso said her first encounter with Cuomo’s behavior took place on Dec. 31, 2019, when she was summoned to the Executive Mansion. After working on the governor’s State of the State speech, she said, Cuomo suggested the two take a selfie together.
“I then felt while taking the selfie, his hand go down my back onto my butt, and he started rubbing it. Not sliding it. Not, you know, quickly brushing over it — rubbing my butt,” she said.
She said the incident led to her hands shaking, which produced blurry photos. They then sat on the couch to take the photos.
Commisso said a second incident took place in November 2020.
She said Cuomo gave her a hug and that “it was probably the most sexually aggressive manner than any of the other hugs that he had given me.”
She wanted it to stop.
“My words were, ‘You’re going to get us in trouble,'” she said, noting that at the time she was afraid staff at the mansion would witness what was taking place.
Cuomo then slammed the door shut, she said.
“He came back to me and that’s when he put his hand up my blouse and cupped my breast over my bra,” she said. “I exactly remember looking down, seeing his hand, which is a large hand, thinking to myself, ‘Oh, my God. This is happening.’”
She said Cuomo said nothing, and when she stopped his hand, he walked away.
Cuomo’s denial of the incident is “disgusting,” Commisso said.
“I know the truth. He knows the truth. I know what happened and so does he,” she said.
When Cuomo held a March 3 media event to declare his innocence regarding other accusations, Commisso said she detected “a smirk. He thinks that he’s untouchable.”
“That was the tipping point. I broke down. I said, ‘he’s lying.’ I felt like he was personally saying it to me,” she said.
She said filing the criminal complaint against Cuomo, which she did last week after the report came out, was “the right thing to do.”
“The governor needs to be held accountable,” she said.
“What he did to me was a crime,” she said. “He broke the law.”
During the interview, she was asked why she was previously hesitant to go public.
“People don’t understand,” she said. “It’s the governor of the state of New York. He is a professional fighter.”
Elsewhere in the interview, a joint session with CBS and the Albany Times Union newspaper, Commisso said she did not think she would be believed.
“There are troopers that are outside of the mansion and there are some mansion staff. Those troopers that are there, they are not there to protect me. They are there to protect him,” she said, according to CBS.
“I felt as though if I did something to insult him, especially insult him in his own home, it wasn’t going to be him that was going to get fired or in trouble. It was going to be me. And I felt as though if I said something that I know, who was going to believe me?”
“I was scared,” she said, according to the Times-Union. “Even though I knew that I had support, you still feel alone. I was afraid that if I had come forward and revealed my name, that the governor and his enablers — I like to call them — would viciously attack me, would smear my name as I had seen and heard them do before to people.”
Commisso said Cuomo’s attentions began with “hugs with kisses on the cheek.”
“Then there was at one point a hug, and then when he went to go kiss me on the cheek, he’d quickly turned his head and he kissed me on the lips,” she said, according to CBS.
“Maybe … he thought this was normal, but to me and the other women that he did this to, oh, it was not normal,” she said, according to the Times Union. “It was not welcomed, and it was certainly not consensual.”
Rita Glavin, an attorney for the governor, pushed back against the report’s allegations.
“This woman’s story as stated in the report is false,” Glavin said, according to CBS.
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