New York Governor Andrew Cuomo reiterated on Sunday that he had no plans to resign, despite the fact that two more accusers came forward over the weekend, taking the total number of accusers to five, The New York Post reported Sunday.
The governor held a press conference over the phone and reportedly stated that Attorney General Letitia James should finish her investigation into the sexual assault allegations first before jumping to any conclusions.
“There is no way I resign. Let’s do the attorney general investigation. Let’s do the findings and then we go from there. But I’m not going to be distracted by this either. We have to get a budget done in three weeks. We have a lot of work to do, a lot of work to do for this state," Cuomo said. "This is not about me and accusations about me. The attorney general can handle that. This is about doing the people’s business and this next six months I believe will determine the future trajectory for New York state.”
“I was elected by the people of the state. I wasn’t elected by politicians,” Cuomo said, repeating what he had stated earlier. “I’m not gonna resign because of allegations.”
“The premise of resigning because of allegations is actually anti-democratic,” he added. “And we’ve always done the exact opposite. You know, the system is based on due process and the credibility of the allegation. Anybody has the ability to make an allegation in democracy, and that’s great, but it’s in the credibility of the allegation.”
Cuomo praised the state attorney general for her work and expressed hope for a successful investigation.
“Let the attorney general do her job,” he said. “She’s very good. She’s very competent. And that will be due process and then we’ll have the facts.”
Regarding the allegations of his longtime employee, former press secretary Karen Hinton, who claimed that Cuomo behaved indecently in 2000 while alone in a hotel room, the governor described Hinton as a "longtime political adversary of mine" and said her claim that he grabbed her inside a hotel room was "not true."
Meanwhile, earlier this week, the first woman to accuse Cuomo of harassment, 36-year old Lindsey Boylan, condemned his reaction to the allegations, continuing to insist on the immediate resignation of the governor.
How can New Yorkers trust you @NYGovCuomo to lead our state if you “don’t know” when you’ve been inappropriate with your own staff?
— Lindsey Boylan (@LindseyBoylan) March 3, 2021
On his Sunday address, however, Cuomo said that people who are demanding his resignation “don’t override the people’s will.”
