On Thursday, after New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) announced New York City will be reopened by July 1st, Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) criticized the timeline, prompting de Blasio Press Secretary Bill Neidhardt to say he doesn’t care what a “serial sexual harasser and assaulter” says “about anything.”
According to the New York Post, Cuomo was asked about de Blasio’s goal to reopen by July 1st during a press conference, to which he said, “I want it opened up on Monday. I want to open up New York City on Tuesday. I want it open on Wednesday. I want Buffalo opened up on Thursday.”
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“There is no person who will safely reopen faster than myself,” Cuomo added. “I’m not going to predict the future. But if you said to me, ‘July 1,’ I’d say, ‘I hope to get there before July 1.’”
When NY1 reporter Courtney Gross asked de Blasio’s Press Secretary for comment, Neidhardt responded, “I don’t care what a serial sexual harasser and assaulter and someone who covered up the deaths of thousands of people at nursing homes has to say about anything.”
Eight women have accused Governor Cuomo of sexual assault or sexual harassment. After the first woman, Lindsey Boylan, accused Cuomo, Cuomo and his allies began “circulating an open letter” that they tried to get staff members to sign that “was a full-on attack on Ms. Boylan’s credibility” according to the New York Times.
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It was also revealed earlier this year that Cuomo’s top aides rewrote a report written by state health officials to hide the true number of nursing home deaths that were a result of Cuomo’s policy to force nursing homes to accept patients who were infected with COVID-19.
“The number — more than 9,000 by that point in June — was not public, and the governor’s most senior aides wanted to keep it that way,” the New York Times reported. “They rewrote the report to take it out, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The New York Times.”
“The extraordinary intervention, which came just as Mr. Cuomo was starting to write a book on his pandemic achievements, was the earliest act yet known in what critics have called a monthslong effort by the governor and his aides to obscure the full scope of nursing home deaths,” the Times added.
