By Barry Kamins and Diana Fabi Samson | October 25, 2023
What’s Left Unsaid: My Life at the Center of Power, Politics & Crisis
By Melissa DeRosa
Union Square & Co., 384 pages
Melissa DeRosa, Andrew Cuomo’s top aide from 2017 to 2021, is the author of “What’s Left Unsaid: My life at the Center of Power, Politics & Crisis.”
As the title suggests, the book is a tell-all book about her experience working for Cuomo during the pandemic, the controversy concerning the administration’s reporting of nursing home deaths, and the sexual harassment allegations against Cuomo which led to his resignation. This insider’s view of the political storm that led to Cuomo’s forced resignation raises serious questions about the roles played by power politics, a compliant media, and an attorney general who wished to be governor, in orchestrating the forced resignation of a duly elected governor.
In March 2020, at 38 years old, DeRosa had the most powerful job in Cuomo’s administration during a global pandemic in which, for the United States, New York was the front line. As secretary to the Governor, she worked incessantly for months under tremendous pressure caused by the public health crisis itself and what she viewed as opportunism by political adversaries.
From March 2020, until Cuomo’s resignation in August 2021, DeRosa managed the governor’s response to the pandemic; the riots in New York City precipitated by the death of George Floyd in police custody; the COVID-19 spike in the fall of 2020; state and federal inquiries into New York’s nursing home deaths; and allegations of sexual harassment directed at the governor. And she recounts the devastating impact of the pressures of her job on her mental health and her personal relationships, including her marriage.
DeRosa is nothing if not loyal to Cuomo. She describes him in glowing terms: Interested in working with both sides of the aisle to get things done in a hyperpartisan climate that left him open to attacks from the left and the right; trusting in the wisdom of New Yorkers; and loyal. While conceding that others might describe him as Machiavellian, DeRosa would describe him as effective in an environment ordinarily characterized by dithering. Her portrayal of other political figures is not so flattering, to say the least.
But it is the sexual harassment allegations that lay bare the troubling intersection between politics, the media and a politicized Attorney General’s Office. The sexual harassment allegations that prompted New York Attorney General Letitia James’ investigation are described as they appeared in media.
First, in early December 2020, a candidate for Manhattan borough president and a former aide of the governor, Lindsey Boylan, made vague allegations on Twitter of a hostile work environment. Days later, she alleged sexual harassment, after contact with Charlotte Bennett, another Cuomo aide. Boylan would eventually claim that while working for Cuomo from 2016 to 2018, he asked her to play strip poker while on a plane with others present; that he kissed her in the office; and that she quit her job. Cuomo released information that Boylan had not quit but had been fired.
The attorney general would later deem the disclosure that Boylan had been fired to be a form of retaliation. Boylan also threatened Howard Zemsky, chair of the Empire State Development Corp., with whom she had had an affair to get him to corroborate her story about the airplane incident, an act of witness tampering that was omitted from the attorney general’s report. DeRosa claims that Boylan solicited others to make similar claims with the goal of amassing 10 or 12 accusers.
Within days of Boylan’s first tweet, Bennett contacted Boylan. She would claim that while working for the governor in spring 2020, he had subjected her to personal questions that made her feel uncomfortable, but that he had never touched her. DeRosa notes that Bennett was accused of colluding with others to make false allegations of sexual assault while a student at Hamilton College, but the media chose to ignore this in its reporting. More vague allegations would follow and become part of the attorney general’s report. A woman who never worked for the governor claimed that he touched her face and lower back and kissed her on the cheek at a wedding. Karen Hinton, another former aide of Cuomo dating back decades, came forward to allege that Cuomo had once hugged her for too long. Anna Lis, an assistant of Hinton’s husband and another former staffer, alleged that six years earlier, Cuomo had called her “sweetheart” and “darling” and had put his arm around her waist for a picture. She had not worked in state government since 2015.
Then on March 8, 2021, Brittany Commisso, another former staffer, would allege that in spring 2020, Cuomo had groped her breast in the middle of the workday. DeRosa notes that this was the first and only serious allegation.
Three days later, a journalist, Jessica Bakeman, claimed that Cuomo grabbed her hand during a holiday party at the executive mansion in 2014, and put his arm around her waist for a photograph.
Then on March 19, a tweet from another reporter, Valerie Bauman, was posted. She alleged that in 2007, Cuomo made “unwavering eye contact” during a press conference before he “beelined” for her, “took [her] hand, entered [her] personal space, and looked into [her] eyes as he said, “Hello, I’m Andrew Cuomo.”
On the same day, an aide named Alyssa McGrath (Commisso’s best friend) told The New York Times that the governor “ogled” her from across a desk, said something to her in Italian that she didn’t understand but believed referenced her looks, and called her and Commisso “mingle mamas.” Apparently, Cuomo said this in response to McGrath’s statement that she and Commisso were going on vacation and that they were “single and ready to mingle.”
On March 29, a press conference was held by Sherry Vill, a woman from Rochester, New York, and her lawyer, Gloria Allred, to speak out about an incident in which Cuomo kissed her on both cheeks while touring her house assessing flood damage. Her son took a picture of the interaction, which Vill herself had posted on Facebook years earlier.
DeRosa describes the accusers as being “blatantly recruited” and trivial allegations being lumped together with a single facially serious allegation, all to be feted on indiscriminately by the media and Cuomo’s enemies in the Legislature, now-former State Sen. Alessandra Biaggi among them.
The accusers who made their way into the attorney general’s report would eventually include nonemployees who posed for pictures with the governor and even a female doctor who administered a televised nasal swab on Cuomo, to whom Cuomo had said, “You make that gown look good.” The doctor did not consider this sexual harassment nor did the millions of people who tuned in to see the governor’s televised outreach to encourage the public to get tested for the virus. In fact, many of the women in the report, according to DeRosa, asserted that they themselves did not believe Cuomo had sexually harassed them.
The attorney general’s report would also include a state trooper whom the attorney general had solicited, and who, having retained Allred, claimed that over the course of four years, the governor had once kissed her on the cheek, once touched her back in an elevator (another trooper, present during the alleged incident, testified he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary), once touched her belly while walking past her as she held a door open at a public event with others present, and once made a single off-color comment about marriage in the company of her and other detail members.
DeRosa’s most searing criticism is reserved for James. She recounts in detail how James capitalized on her opportunity to take out a governor, already weakened by a media frenzy around largely specious allegations and further compromised by the still-evolving governance issues concerning COVID nursing home deaths. DeRosa asserts that James did this for no other reason but her own ambition to be governor.
In what can only be characterized as foreshadowing, DeRosa recounts a lunch with James in 2019, during which DeRosa suggests that James run for New York City mayor. In the ensuing conversation James makes the gratuitous comment that she is unafraid of running against Eric Adams because “let’s just say Eric Adams has baggage. The female kind,” she said. Of course, no allegations have ever been made against Adams but DeRosa believes that James’ comment reflects her awareness that such allegations are political weapons and her implied willingness to use them to her advantage.
When discussions about an investigation into these complaints began, James’ perceived conflict of interest was of paramount concern to Cuomo and his team. But James refused to allay these concerns by agreeing to disqualify herself from running for governor. Nevertheless, state legislators cornered Cuomo with threats that they would move immediately to impeach him if he did not agree to having James oversee the investigation. Cuomo capitulated once James agreed to two preconditions: that James recuse herself from involvement in the investigation and that she not select a plaintiffs attorney as special counsel. DeRosa argues that James did not keep her word on either count. James chose Anne Clark, a plaintiffs attorney, and Joon Kim, a former deputy U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York under Preet Bharara. Bharara was a longtime foe of Cuomo and Kim had run an investigation of Cuomo that spanned years while at the U.S. Attorney’s Office. That either of these people, Clark or Kim, would be fair and impartial was a pipe dream. Moreover, James herself admitted to DeRosa that her recusal was merely performative.
DeRosa recounts a disturbing conversation with James on the day this deal was hatched. James placed a direct call to DeRosa. She said, “Melissa, you have to calm down and trust people,” to which DeRosa retorted, “Madam Attorney General, I’m sorry, but this entire thing is crazy. And, no, I don’t trust you.” James continued, “Melissa, I was at an event yesterday. So many people came up to me and said Lindsey Boylan is not credible” and “[o]n the Charlotte Bennett thing, it is just words. Listen, I will talk to you on the side. I will be engaged with you back and forth.” This conversation reflects James’ plan to be very much involved in the investigation, although her intent is to assuage DeRosa’s concern.
DeRosa laments that “Andrew Cuomo’s governorship was over the day we were forced to make the referral to Tish James to oversee the investigation.” Five months later, and only two weeks after Cuomo had testified for 11 hours, a probe that ostensibly involved three instances of alleged sexual harassment made by Boylan, Bennett and Commisso resulted in a finding that Cuomo had violated state and federal law in sexually harassing 11 women. One week later, Cuomo resigned.
Sexual harassment is a gender-based workplace discrimination law and only covers actions that a reasonable person would find to be more than “petty slights” and “trivial inconveniences.” But the attorney general had included petty and trivial allegations in the report, DeRosa notes, some of which were made by people who had never worked in state government. Moreover, according to DeRosa, the report omitted exculpatory evidence and the underlying investigation remains, to this day, largely secret.
DeRosa drives home her suspicion that James used the sexual harassment allegations in what turned out to be a failed effort to catapult herself into the governor’s mansion by noting that only James seemed to be aware of the criminal complaint for misdemeanor forcible touching that was filed by the Albany County sheriff, only to be dismissed weeks later by the district attorney for lack of evidence. James immediately put out a statement asserting that the criminal complaint “further validate[d] the findings in our report” and promptly announced that she was running for governor.
DeRosa notes that when the media finally began to view critically the manner in which the investigation had been conducted, James began to selectively leak parts of the file as a distraction. None of it supported the underlying claim that Cuomo was responsible for sexual misconduct, but simply served to destroy other people’s lives as collateral damage. But all of this was too late for Cuomo.
At the end of her book, DeRosa signals, much like a prize fighter, that she is ready to step into the ring again. She will surely fight another day as a fierce partisan who passionately believes in her causes. But in this moment, she shines a bright light on some important questions: Did the #MeToo movement go too far? Has it conflated serious claims with those that are “petty and trivial”? And have such allegations been weaponized for political purposes, enabled by a media unwilling to do the critical work of reporting on such matters without fear or favor? Finally, how can we ensure that serious allegations be fairly adjudicated without political influence? Unless meaningful answers are provided, our political process, government and the judicial system are at risk of being hijacked and the public will be the loser.