A New York sheriff said Friday that “we have an overwhelming amount of evidence” against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a day after a criminal complaint accused him of a sex crime against an aide.
Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple also revealed that he, along with everyone else involved in the case, was caught by surprise by the abrupt docketing of the complaint and leak to media of it shortly after his office filed it in Albany City Court on Thursday.
Apple told reporters that he had expected the complaint to be reviewed by court officials to determine the next steps in the case, not formally filed.
The complaint accuses Cuomo, 63, of forcible touching of a female executive assistant last December in the governor’s mansion. The charge is a misdemeanor.
Cuomo is due to appear in court on Nov. 17 in the case. Apple said the disgraced Democrat would be arrested at some point.
“We kind of got sandbagged ourselves,” Apple told reporters, saying he planned for the complaint to be publicly filed much later than Thursday after he had a chance to inform the county district attorney and Cuomo’s lawyer. The accuser in the case likewise was not notified that paperwork was filed in court right before the complaint was issued.
“Everything moved too fast,” Apple said. “We were expecting the documents to be reviewed. We weren’t expecting a five-minute turnaround.”
But Apple repeatedly said that the unexpected release of the complaint by the court after would not affect the strength of the case against Cuomo.
“It’s a solid case,” he said.
Albany County District Attorney David Soares, whose office is responsible for prosecuting criminal cases, in a statement Thursday said, “Like the rest of the public, we were surprised to learn today that a criminal complaint was filed in Albany City Court by the Albany County Sheriff’s Office against Andrew Cuomo.”
Cuomo’s lawyer, Rita Glavin, in a written statement Thursday had accused Apple of unprofessional conduct for filing documents that led to the complaint being issued without telling Soares first.
“Governor Cuomo has never assaulted anyone, and Sheriff Apple’s motives here are patently improper,” Glavin said.
Apple on Friday brushed aside suggestions by Cuomo’s camp that he was politically motivated to file a criminal charge against Cuomo, saying his office had treated the investigation like any other probe involving a misdemeanor.
Cuomo’s team has argued that the investigation that led to his resignation in August was politically tainted by state Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat who delegated the task of conducting the probe to lawyers in private practice.
James on Friday announced she will run for governor, seeking to unseat Gov. Kathy Hochul, who had been Cuomo’s lieutenant governor.
The probe found that Cuomo had sexually harassed nearly a dozen women, including current and former staffers, among them the executive assistant who accused him of groping her breast during an encounter in the governor’s mansion last year.
On Thursday, James issued a statement after the criminal complaint was released, saying, “The criminal charges brought today against Mr. Cuomo for forcible touching further validate the findings in our report.”
Cuomo’s spokesman Rich Azzopardi on Friday, before James’s candidacy was formally announced, in a statement said, “In August Craig Apple publicly credited Tish Jame’s report as evidence to pronounce the Governor guilty of an allegation he had not yet investigated.”
“Now, as she prepares to announce her Gubernatorial run, Tish James returned the favor, using … Apple’s conveniently timed move to validate her sham report — here politics is validating politics, what’s missing is facts and the law.”
“In an unprecedented move, Craig Apple ‘erroneously’ filed misdemeanor charges against Former Governor Cuomo without notification or authorization of the District Attorney or the complainant. It seemed the only person who was notified, and had a statement ready to go, was Tish James,” Azzopardi said. “New Yorker’s aren’t stupid and none of this passes the laugh test. This isn’t the wild west: the abuse of power and misconduct demonstrated by this Cowboy Sheriff and AG James is transparent and it has to stop.”
The criminal complaint says that Cuomo intentionally, “and for no legitimate purpose, forcibly place his hand under the blouse shirt of the victim …. and onto her intimate body part.′
‘Specifically, the [victim’s] left breast for the purposes of degrading and gratifying his sexual desires.”
Forcible touching is a Class A misdemeanor. If convicted, Cuomo could be sentenced up to a year in prison, to up to three years of probation.
