Cuomo To Resign Amid Sexual Harassment Scandal

NEW YORK CITY — Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday he'll step down as New York's chief executive.

Cuomo said his resignation will be effective in 14 days and promised to make Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul's transition to the Govenor's Mansion as seamless as possible.

He preceded his announcement with an at-turns defiant and contrite response to the swirling sexual harassment scandal against him. But while he decried what he called a politically motivated probe against him, he acknowledged an upcoming impeachment process threatened to consume New York's government at a critical time.

“I think given the circumstances the best way I can help now is I step aside and let government get back to government,” he said. “And therefore, that’s what I’ll do.”

But the famously combative Cuomo still went out swinging, even as he bowed to months-long weight of crushing political scandals.

Cuomo, while he said he took "full responsibility" his actions, still blasted Attorney General Letitia James' investigation against him that found he sexually harassed 11 women. The probe resulted in a bombshell 165-page report that Cuomo acknowledged was shocking.

“The reaction was outrage: it should have been,” he said. “However, it was also false.”

“The most serious allegations made against me had no credible factual basis in the report, and there is a difference,” he said.

Before what ended up being Cuomo's resignation speech, his personal attorney Rita Glavin gave an extraordinary presentation streamed on the governor's website. She detailed what she characterized as the investigation’s shortcomings, the political motivations behind certain accusers and misunderstandings.

“What happened here was this investigation took every possible negative thing that could be said about the governor and they put it in, and they disregarded the positive — the things that would balance it and the things that would undermine what some people were saying about the governor,” she said.

Cuomo himself again denied the accusations against him.

“This is not to say that there are not 11 women who I truly offended,” he said. “There are, and for that I deeply, deeply apologize.”

“I take full responsibility for my actions,” he said. “I have been too familiar with people. My sense of humor can be insensitive and off-putting. I do hug and kiss people casually, women and men.”

The governor said there were "generational and cultural" shifts that he didn't fully appreciate, and that the report brought to light.

Cuomo said he believed New Yorkers would understand, if he could communicate the facts through the "frenzy."

But he said the impeachment process outlined by State Assembly members threatens to tie up government when it should be fighting COVID-19, gun violence and problems in New York City.

“Wasting money on distractions is the last thing that state government should be doing and I cannot be the cause of that,” he said.