Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is trying to toss the bombshell sexual harassment lawsuit brought by a state trooper on his detail — claiming her claims were part of a conspiracy within the state police force to attack him while he was in office.
Cuomo finally filed a formal response Monday to the Brooklyn federal court suit brought three years ago by an anonymous woman known as Trooper 1 — demanding that she pay back the $8.6 million in taxpayer-funded legal fees used so far for his defense.
“Trooper 1’s allegations against him are false and were part and parcel of a plan to attack Governor Cuomo that Trooper 1 and other members of the NYSP planned, coordinated, and executed because they were disgruntled with Governor Cuomo for reasons entirely unrelated to any purported harassment or retaliation,” the filing states.
Cuomo — who resigned in disgrace in 2021 and is now running for New York City mayor — hasn’t paid a dime of his own money on legal fees in any of the sprawling litigation associated with his administration, which the state comptroller’s office reports now exceeds $61 million.
But his filing asks for him to be awarded “interest, attorney’s fees, costs, and disbursements, as permitted by law or statute.”
Cuomo also asks the judge to dismiss the suit “with prejudice,” meaning that the claims could not be refiled at a later date, while blasting the allegations as “wholly unreliable and false hearsay.”
The court already tossed a retaliation claim from Trooper 1’s complaint, which was first filed in 2022, but her core accusations of sexual harassment remain.
The trooper said Cuomo asked for her to be transferred to his detail after the two met at a 2017 presser on the RFK bridge and she began working for him the following year before being moved to his travel team in 2019.
Her suit claims that Cuomo touched her stomach and back — and kissed her on the cheek — while she was on the job in 2019, among other undesirable behavior.
Trooper 1’s attorney, Valdi Licul, fired back Tuesday, citing multiple investigations conducted by independent firms that found “overwhelming evidence” Cuomo engaged in sexual harassment, and ridiculed his request for payback.
“That hard-working taxpayers have had to pay millions of dollars – and counting – to fund Cuomo’s defense and his continued attacks on his victims is astounding,” Licul told The Post.
“His request for fees is patently frivolous, not only because every independent investigation has found that he violated the law, but also because it appears that he hasn’t actually paid any fees.”
Cuomo’s attorney, legal superstar Rita Glavin, blamed the three-year delay in filing the ex-gov’s pleadings — as well as the hefty tab for legal expenses — on the anonymous accuser,
Glavin claimed the plaintiff “copied and pasted” findings from the report conducted by state Attorney General Letitia James’ office into sexual harassment allegations against Cuomo “into her complaint,” and refused to limit her legal action to her own accusations.
“We repeatedly asked Trooper 1 to drop those women from her suit to avoid this costly and unnecessary litigation, but she refused,” Glavin said. “As a result, defense costs ballooned and nonparty witnesses were roped into the case. All of these decisions were outside of Governor Cuomo’s control. Trooper 1 could stop this at any moment by limiting her case to her own allegations, but she won’t.”
Attorneys for Cuomo are arguing for an expanded order of discovery that could include dozens and dozens of depositions from people named in the AG’s report, which found that the thrice-elected Democrat had sexually harassed multiple current and former state employees.
Cuomo, who said at the time that he “never touched anyone inappropriately or made inappropriate sexual advances,” resigned two weeks later.
A spokesperson for James said Tuesday that the AG’s office stands behind its investigation, adding that “the former Governor bears responsibility for his own actions, full stop.”
Taxpayers have shelled out over $61 million in legal fees stemming from Cuomo’s various scandals as of April 21.
Those Cuomo controversies, which have also ensnared multiple state agencies, run the gamut from sexual misconduct accusations, impeachment proceedings, his COVID-19 pandemic response — and his largely condemned, $5 million book deal for a memoir he penned as thousands of New Yorkers were succumbing to the virus daily.
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