A former assistant to Governor Andrew Cuomo provided new details on Wednesday to support her allegations of sexual harassment – including a claim that the top elected New York official kissed her “on the lips” without warning in his Manhattan office.
Lindsey Boylan – now a Democratic candidate for the Manhattan presidency – made the stunning allegation in an essay on the Medium website.
Boylan said the incident occurred after her promotion in 2018 to Cuomo’s deputy secretary for economic development and special adviser to the governor – a job she initially turned down “because I didn’t want to be near him.”
“We were in his New York City office on Third Avenue,” she wrote.
As I got up to leave and walked to an open door, he stood in front of me and kissed my lips. I was in shock, but I kept walking. “
Afterward, Boylan wrote, “ I came to work every day sick, ” and resigned on September 26, 2018.
Boylan also claims that Cuomo suggested, “Let’s play strip poker,” as they “flew home from an October 2017 event in Western New York on his taxpayer-funded jet.”
Cuomo made the comment while he and Boylan sat opposite each other, with his press officer to her right “and a state soldier behind us,” her essay said.
“Governor Andrew Cuomo has created a culture within his administration where sexual harassment and harassment are so widespread that it is not only condoned but expected,” she wrote.
Boylan made her bombshell claims in the wake of The Post’s recent revelation that top Cuomo assistant Melissa DeRosa privately admitted that his government was hiding the total number of nursing home residents killed by COVID-19 from lawmakers and the public for fear that federal prosecutors would use it “against us.”
The Post’s scoop has led to calls for Cuomo’s impeachment and an investigation by the FBI and the Brooklyn US Attorney’s office.
In her 1,700-word essay, Boylan said that DeRosa and “ other top women ” around Cuomo “ normalized ” his alleged harassment so that “ only now do I realize how insidious his abuse was. ”
Boylan also posted screenshots of government emails, including one in which Cuomo’s executive secretary, Stephanie Benton, reportedly relayed a message from him referring to a reported ex-girlfriend to show that she was his type.
“He said, see Lisa Shields. You could be sisters. Except that you are the prettier sister, ”said the email of December 14, 2016.
Later, Boylan wrote, Cuomo “started calling me ‘Lisa’ in front of colleagues. It was humiliating. “
Another image shows an email exchange from November 1, 2016 in which Cuomo’s chief of staff, Jill DesRosiers, Howard Zemsky – then the state’s czar for economic development – asked if Boylan would attend a meeting the following day.
Zemsky wrote back, “Ha!” adding that Boylan would be in Albany “but it will be difficult for her to focus on the presentations as she worries about how the government day in Rochester is going.”
In her essay, Boylan also said that after first accusing Cuomo of sexual harassment in a series of tweets in December, “two women contacted me with their own experiences.”
“One of them described how she lived in constant fear, afraid of what would happen to her if she rejected the governor’s advances,” she wrote.
The other said she had been instructed by the governor to warn officials who upset him that their jobs might be in danger. Both told me they are too scared to speak up. “
When she initially charged Cuomo, Boylan did not provide details of his alleged harassment and did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
In a tweet on Wednesday, she said, “I never intended to share the details of my experience with the Cuomo government, but I am doing this now in the hope that it will be easier for others to speak their own truth.”
Cuomo’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the governor denied Boylan’s allegations in December.
“It’s not true,” Cuomo said at a press conference a day after her tweets.
Look, I fought for it and I believe a woman has a right to come forward and speak up and voice the problems and concerns she has. But it just isn’t true. “