Ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Sunday brushed off a $450,000 taxpayer-funded settlement over sex-harass allegations against him — while suggesting his administration helped do the “impossible’’ to “save lives’’ during COVID.
“I said when it started from the beginning that [the sex lawsuit] was all political, and that’s the way it turned out,” Cuomo, 67, told The Post outside Calvary Baptist Church in Jamaica, Queens, where he had just delivered a brief address at the house of worship to mark Easter Sunday.
“I was dropped from the suit, so it was up to the state. The state did a settlement, which was basically settling a nuisance suit — sometimes it [costs] more to litigate than to settle. But it was all politics,” he said.
Asked for his thoughts about how New Yorkers must now foot the bill for the settlement, Cuomo responded, “That’s why you can’t politicize these things.
“If you start allowing political lawsuits and claims, then the taxpayers are gonna be paying a lot of money,” he said before wishing reporters a happy Easter and getting into the driver’s seat of a black Dodge.
Cuomo has persistently maintained his innocence against a slew of sexual-harassment claims.
Cuomo stepped down from office in August 2021 amid the sexual-harassment scandal and claims that his administration hid the true number of state nursing-home deaths involving COVID during the pandemic.
His administration was blamed for scores of COVID deaths because of its policy of moving infected patients into nursing homes, where some of the state’s most vulnerable population was, when hospitals became overcrowded.
The former governor, who is running for New York City mayor, told the church crowd Sunday that there is “too much negativity” these days — “too much us vs. them rather than we.
“Let us rise above the chaos and the clamor so America may hear its better angels,” he said.
“New York City has always been in the process of renewal and betterment. You knock us down, we get up stronger than ever before. You knock us down on 911, we get up stronger than before. You hit us with Hurricane Sandy, we come back stronger than ever before.
“You hit us with COVID, life and death, we come together as a community and do what they said was impossible, and we save lives.”
In the case of the nearly half-million-dollar sex-harass settlement involving him, Charlotte Bennett, 29, a former assistant to Cuomo when he was governor, filed suit against the state in March 2023. She alleged that it failed to act to address her complaint that Cuomo subjected her to degrading sexual harassment on the job and accused her of lying when she came forward with the accusations.
She was awarded the settlement Friday. She will personally receive $100,000, while the other $350,000 will go for her lawyers and legal costs, all of which will be paid out of state coffers.
As part of the settlement, Bennett agree not to seek further employment in the state Executive Chamber.
Cuomo resigned two weeks after a report by the state attorney general’s office that determined he had sexually harassed 11 women and created a hostile work environment in his office — a finding later backed by the federal prosecutors.
All told, New York has incurred upward of $9 million to defend Cuomo against Bennett’s claims, according to public records.
In December, Cuomo filed a notice that he would sue Bennett for defamation. A civil complaint detailing his allegations has yet to be filed.
He is currently sitting comfortably in the lead among a crowded field vying for New York City mayor. The Democratic primary will be June 24.
The post Cuomo dismisses ‘political’ $450K sex-harass settlement, suggests admin helped ‘save lives’ during COVID appeared first on New York Post.
