Cuomo’s cell phone trouble an element in two harassment allegations

« They said, ‘Oh, good, you’re here,’ and brought her into the office suite — and then the two of them left, » said Jessica Westerman, Bennett’s attorney. « You only get into (that) office if the trooper lets you in. »

It was just a day after the 63-year-old governor, in another one-on-one setting with Bennett, had allegedly asked the 25-year-old a series of probing and unsettling questions about her personal life, including whether the fact that she was a sexual assault survivor made intimacy difficult for her. He also asked about her willingness to have an intimate relationship with an older man and told her he was lonely, Bennett said.

Not long after she was alone with Cuomo in the office, he asked her to help him with his iPhone, claiming he was uncertain how to get from his « settings » app to his « notes » app, according to Westerman. The request required Bennett to stand very close to the governor in order to show him how to operate the phone — a device that, by then, the governor had been using for at least several months.

Bennett has said Cuomo did not touch her inappropriately, but made her feel uncomfortable due to the probing questions he had asked a day earlier. Since her claims came to light two weeks ago, Cuomo has said he “never made advances toward Ms. Bennett, nor did I ever intend to act in any way that was inappropriate.”

Yet it wasn’t the only time that Cuomo may have used the pretext of not being able to operate his iPhone in order to have one of his many young female staffers come close to him.

Late last fall, roughly five months after the encounter with Bennett, Cuomo summoned another female staff member from the Capitol to his Executive Mansion. This time the woman, who is roughly half his age, was directed to his private residence on the second floor.

Again, Cuomo said he could not operate the « notes » app on his iPhone and needed her assistance.

According to a person briefed on the woman’s account, she alleges that Cuomo put his arms around her, pulled her close and began groping her, including reaching his hands under her blouse to touch her breasts. She told him to stop and left, the person said.

Senior aides to the governor on Saturday said that Cuomo is notorious for his lack of technical proficiency — and that for years he has sought help from subordinates with his smartphones, computers and software. They also said that Cuomo has an office space on the second floor of the mansion and that staff frequently visit him there to assist with clerical duties.

The woman’s allegations that Cuomo groped her at the mansion, first reported by the Times Union last week, have intensified the calls for the governor to resign amid accusations by multiple women that he has engaged in inappropriate behavior, including sexual harassment.

While Cuomo in a statement described the woman’s account as « gut-wrenching, » he has denied touching any woman « inappropriately. » In a Friday briefing, without specifying he was addressing the allegations of the woman who was summoned to his residence four months ago, he disputed her account.

« There is still a question of the truth. I did not do what has been alleged, period, » he said. « I won’t speculate about people’s possible motives, but I can tell you as former attorney general who’s gone through this many times, there are often many motivations for making an allegation. And that is why you need to know the facts before you make a decision. »

He has refused to resign and urged the public to wait for the results of an ongoing attorney general’s investigation of the allegations — including his office’s handling of the formal complaint that Bennett filed last June.

Interviews with multiple people who have worked for Cuomo reveal what they believe has been a pattern in which the governor has infused his staff with attractive young women, many of whom have minimal clerical duties and are often given assignments that require one-on-one encounters with him, including to take « dictation. »

But the women are not stenographers. Instead, they’re often obliged to sit near the governor as he speaks while they record his words on a smartphone or other device. Then they return to their offices or nearby desks and transcribe what he said into letters or memos.

« The don’t take shorthand. They record the dictation, record what he’s saying, and then go back to the office and they type the letter, » a person familiar with the practice said. « It’s a human Dictaphone. »

The senior aides responded that Cuomo, whose prior administrations were dominated by males, did not dispute the governor’s habit of dictating his missives to staff members, but they contend he also has used male employees for that task and that his technological skills are rudimentary.

Westerman, one of the attorneys for Bennett, contends that Cuomo’s alleged misconduct has been « enabled » by his most senior aides, many of them women.

« Certainly he surrounded himself with young, pretty women, and I think that the fact that he couldn’t perform basic functions like work an iPhone enabled him, » she said. « That just sort of creates opportunities for him to blur those work and personal boundaries and for him to invite the young pretty women that he surrounds himself with into his office and his personal space to help him with those basic tasks. »

In Bennett’s case, Westerman said, the apparent mishandling of her sexual harassment complaint last year underscores that Cuomo’s top aides have his interests at stake and may go to great lengths to protect him.

Bennett reported her allegations to Cuomo’s chief of staff, Jill DeRosiers. The governor’s current acting counsel, Beth Garvey, has said the case was subsequently assigned to Judith Mogul, a special counsel to the governor. Rather than reporting the allegations to the Governor’s Office of Employee Relations as required, Mogul resolved it by transferring Bennett to a new job in the Department of Health.

Bennett also was not informed by the attorney of her rights to pursue other avenues, including filing a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or the state Division of Human Rights.

In a statement, Garvey said Bennett had « received the transfer she requested to a position in which she had expressed a long-standing interest, and was thoroughly debriefed on the facts which did not include a claim of physical contact or inappropriate sexual conduct. She was consulted regarding the resolution, and expressed satisfaction and appreciation for the way in which it was handled. »

But Westerman disputes the assertion by the governor’s office that the allegations were handled according to state laws and regulations. She contends that Benton, DeRosiers, DeRosa and other senior members of his staff — including attorneys — share responsibility for the governor’s alleged pattern of misconduct and for creating a work environment that routinely put young and attractive women in close encounters with the governor.

As to the alleged enabling by Cuomo’s top aides, « Charlotte’s case is actually a prime example of that: Charlotte reported the harassment of her to his female chief of staff, Jill DeRosiers, and Jill succeeded for some amount of time in sweeping it under the rug, » Westerman said. « The governor surrounds himself with people who are loyal to him, people who are going to do whatever they can do — whatever they need to do — to protect him. And that’s exactly what happened in Charlotte’s case. »

Richard Azzopardi, a senior advisor to Cuomo, said any assertions that members of the governor’s top inner circle fostered his alleged misconduct are misplaced.

« These are some of the most accomplished and dedicated public servants in the state, and they don’t deserve to have their names dragged through the mud while they respect the process of the (attorney general’s) review, » Azzopardi said.

Attorney General Letitia James has characterized her office’s examination of the allegations against Cuomo as an « independent investigation, » not a « review. »

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Bennett said that she had « no problem with what they did,” referring to the handling of her complaint by DesRosiers and Mogul, and she added that they had been sympathetic to her.

The people interviewed for this story also acknowledged that Cuomo relies heavily on staff for assistance, especially with technology. He began using an iPhone a little more than a year ago, they said, after more than a decade in which he and his staff carried BlackBerrys. Since Cuomo rarely types or uses email, and instead writes by hand or dictates, that sets up the encounters in which staffers are summoned to type his words or help scan documents and send them to senior staff.

Benton, a longtime aide to Cuomo since he was state attorney general, is often involved with making the work assignments, which might interrupt staffers’ plans on nights or weekends. Benton helps keep the governor’s schedule, fields his phone calls and monitors his emails since he is known to rarely send electronic communications.

DesRosiers also often assigns subordinates to staff the governor.

One of the former staffers interviewed for this story — who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation — spoke of instances in which young, attractive women were called into meetings with the governor in which they felt they had no reason to be there.  
 
“I think he did really support women in that he promoted them, but sometimes you did notice they had like a certain look that he liked, » she said. « They were always put together, they always wore Christian Louboutin shoes. It was always a very specific, put-together look.”
  
“He’s a man of a certain age,” the former aide remarked of the governor. 
 
The same staffer also said that she believed Cuomo arranged to have attractive, younger women seated close to his office.

« He’d want to have them in his line of sight, » she said, adding that his most loyal or influential aides were also nearby. « I think that both mattered, but I do think that he liked young women being close to him. »

But the governor’s senior aides disputed that assertion, noting that the governor cannot see the executive office where many of those employees are seated, even if he stood in his doorway. They said he occasionally walks through that office to greet the staff there but usually takes a different route to his office through the ceremonial Red Room.

In a Medium essay posted in February, Cuomo’s first public accuser, former aide Lindsey Boylan, included the image of an email that she had received from Benton on Dec. 14, 2016.

In the email, Benton relayed a suggestion from Cuomo: That Boylan should look up images of Lisa Shields — his rumored former girlfriend — because Shields and Benton « could be sisters” and Boylan was “the better looking sister.”

Cuomo began calling Boylan “Lisa” in front of colleagues, Boylan wrote. She characterized the remarks as « degrading. »
 
A former economic development advisor, Boylan has accused Cuomo of harassing her on several occasions, including giving her an unsolicited kiss on the lips in 2018 at his Manhattan office.

In the Medium, Boylan asserted that he kissed her after a one-on-one briefing with Cuomo regarding economic and infrastructure projects.

“As I got up to leave and walk toward an open door, he stepped in front of me and kissed me on the lips. I was in shock, but I kept walking,” Boylan wrote. “I left past the desk of Stephanie Benton. I was scared she had seen the kiss. The idea that someone might think I held my high-ranking position because of the governor’s ‘crush’ on me was more demeaning than the kiss itself.”

In a statement two weeks ago, Cuomo denied kissing Boylan.

He characterized his workplace behavior as « playful » and an attempt to « make jokes that I think are funny. » He stressed that he « never inappropriately touched anybody and I never propositioned anybody and I never intended to make anyone feel uncomfortable, but these are allegations that New Yorkers deserve answers to. »

blyons@timesunion.com