OPINION:
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced his resignation - or in his case - gave his two weeks’ notice on Tuesday after an investigation found that he had sexually harassed 11 women. According to the NY Times, “dozens” more employees have called his office a “toxic workplace, particularly for young women.” There is no doubt it was time for him to go – but what now happens with his deputies who not only knew of this behavior and did nothing but even actively defended it?
A toxic work environment - especially in an office as large as the New York Governor’s - may be caused by the person at the top, but it only continues if it has the support of the deputies and staff surrounding the bad actor who intentionally insulated that person.
In the case of Lindsey Boylan, a credible accuser of Governor Cuomo, at least four senior staff members circled the wagons, worked to discredit her, and mobilized other staff to join their anti-woman charge. Melissa DeRosa, the Secretary to the Governor, Richard Azzopardi, the Senior Deputy Communications Director, and Senior Advisor to the Governor at the time, Beth Garvey, Senior Counsel and Senior Advisor to the Governor at the time and Linda Lacewell, Superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services.
While Ms. DeRosa, Mr. Azzopardi, and Ms. Garvey referred to Ms. Boylan as “crazy” and worked to put a file of documents together to smear her - Ms. Lacewell took ‘first place’ in the group as the most egregious of all of the characters.
Ms. Lacewell, who most recently announced her resignation, was known as Cuomo’s ‘Minister of Defense.’ In March, Lacewell was implicated in the Cuomo’s COVID-19 nursing home scandal, as one of the aides who allegedly altered nursing home data to undercount coronavirus deaths – and in the current New York Attorney General’s sexual harassment investigation report, she actually went around the office and gathered signatures from staff members for a letter to discredit Ms. Boylan’s accounts of sexual harassment.
The letter – which was never released – was a typical Democrat smear campaign. According to the AG report, it not only denied Ms. Boylan’s claims and attacked her credibility but stated that she was politically motivated because she might eventually want to run for Governor herself and had “connections with supporters of President Trump.” If you’re keeping score here, Ms. Lacewell not only doesn’t believe a victim but took it upon herself to use taxpayer money to smear her with unprovable accusations and get her colleagues at her own job to literally sign on to it. Now would be a reasonable time to note that Ms. Lacewell is also a former- NYU Law School Ethics in Government professor who - at the same time she wrote the letter - was teaching a course designed to cover “the legal and ethical responsibilities of lawyers in public service.”
There are always bad actors in government - the authors of the Federalist Papers and our founding documents knew this – and they established means by which we can expel those bad actors from leadership positions. Lost in the removal process and press coverage of most of those bad actors are the staffers who would do anything and everything to protect those politicians.
In this instance, with all of its pomp and circumstance, it’s easy to forget that unlike a member of Congress whose entire staff would leave with them, a Governor has dozens, if not many more appointees that continue defending him. Those people will still be in a position to silence or intimidate other women who may still be nervous about sharing their story of what the soon to be former-Governor had done to them. If someone was willing to blindly sign a letter discredit an accuser pushed by one of his deputies, a reasonable question arises as to what else they would be willing to continue to do.
The characters named in this piece were willing to defend Gov. Cuomo at any cost – even to the point of villainizing a victim of his gross behavior – but they are just the ones the NY AG’s investigation has exposed. How many others are there? What happens to these taxpayer-funded employees? If Gov. Cuomo goes, should they not put in their two weeks’ notice and go with him? Ms. Lacewell knew the writing was on the wall and left, but there are still far too many hanging on.
After months of aches and pains, New York finally went to the dentist and had the rotten tooth removed from its mouth - but the state must now follow up by taking some anti-biotics over the next week or so to truly rid itself of the infection. Gov. Cuomo was the cause of the issue, but the senior staff that remains will continue to plague the state until they are also told to leave.
• Tim Young is a Washington Times columnist, SiriusXM personality, and founder of http://IDsAcrossAmerica.org. His Twitter handle is @TimRunsHisMouth
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