TROOPER’S LAWSUIT AGAINST CUOMO FACES TOUGH FIGHT; 1 OF ONLY 2 FILED AGAINST HIM
4 TROOPERS’ SWORN TESTIMONY CLOUDS ANONYMOUS TROOPER’S SEX DISCRIMATION CASE AGAINST ANDREW CUOMO
Then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and “Trooper 1” at Penn Station in Manhattan, December 2020. The now-former governor has been accused of sexually harassing the woman. Photo Credit: courtesy of former Andrew Cuomo.
THE FREE LANCE NEEDS YOUR DONATIONS TO SURVIVE. DONATE HERE.
An anonymous State Trooper's claims then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed her were some of the most explosive allegations that forced him to resign in 2021.
Cuomo allegedly personally handpicked the Trooper for addition to the elite State Police unit charged with protecting him. Then the governor allegedly subjected her to sexually-charged small-talk, touched her when she didn't want to be touched and asked for permission to kiss her, twice, according to the indictment-like 165-page report by Attorney General Letitia James published Aug. 3. Cuomo resigned Aug. 10.
"Appalling" and "very surprising" is what Thomas Mungeer, president of the New York State Troopers PBA, called his member’s allegations.
Now, two years later, sworn testimony in the Trooper's federal lawsuit against Cuomo, given by four other State Troopers, calls into question core components of her account, according to court records in the case made public in Brooklyn federal court on Friday.
"Discovery so far does not support Trooper 1’s own allegations," Cuomo’s lawyer in the case, Rita Glavin, wrote to the judge overseeing the case. (A copy of the letter is embedded below.)
The court previously gave the woman permission to proceed anonymously. She is named "Trooper 1" in legal documents, as she was in James' report. "Discovery" is a preliminary phase in lawsuits, before a trial is even scheduled, during which plaintiffs and defendants gather evidence to support their claims, including from each other.
If plaintiffs don't gather enough evidence during discovery to support their claims, their lawsuits can be dismissed without a trial.
The new revelations in Cuomo's favor come days after another alleged victim of Cuomo, Ana Liss, testified in July in Trooper 1’s lawsuit that Cuomo actually did not sexually harass her and contemporary news reports to the contrary were false, The Free Lance reported last Tuesday.
New York State Police Academy 2015 graduating class, the year Trooper 1 graduated. Photo Credit: Office of the Governor via Flickr.
Out of the 11 women James' report said were sexually harassed by Cuomo, only two filed lawsuits against him: Trooper 1 and Charlotte Bennett.
Cuomo's first accuser and most out-spoken antagonist, Lindsey Boylan, did not sue. In another newly-filed court document her lawyer, E. Danya Perry, revealed Boylan did not sue "to avoid retraumatization."
It also allows her to avoid cross-examination.
James' report is based on the womens’ allegations alone. They were never subjected to close courtroom scrutiny. They were never tested in a trial or even a trial-type administrative hearing. They testified under oath, but remotely. Only James' investigators were allowed to question them. James did not allow Cuomo's lawyers to participate at all.
In effect, James immunized all of Cuomo's accusers from cross-examination—something the Supreme Court has long held is a basic requirement of due process.
Any proceeding depriving an accused of the right to confront and cross-examine their accusers is unreliable. It's also misleading because it camouflages this massive structural defect beneath a veneer of reliability by creating the impression it's been carefully scrutinized by a court when, in fact and law, it has not.
Cuomo Spokesman Rich Azzopardi previously called James’ report a “political hit job.” It was, he added, “cut and pasted into this suit” by Trooper 1. “The people of New York deserve to have the actual truth and the facts behind it.” (Azzopardi was added as a defendant in Trooper 1’s lawsuit after he called its original filing “extortion.”)
The press office for Attorney Genera James did not respond to an email request for comment.
Examining Trooper 1's allegations with the new testimony of her colleagues, as described in Friday's court filings, reveals her case against Cuomo is not as strong as it once seemed.
One of the most disturbing parts of Trooper 1's claim is that Cuomo himself personally selected her for the Protective Services Unit. The PSU guards the governor and his family, giving Cuomo daily access to her. But one of the State Police officers who led the unit, Senior Investigator James Boyle, testified under oath that he, not Cuomo, selected Trooper 1.
Trooper 1 is from New York City. Before she joined the State Police force in 2015, she knew nothing about the state above the Bronx, she told James' investigators. Two years later, Cuomo noticed her at a press conference on the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, Nov. 4, 2017. The two chatted briefly.
"Immediately thereafter, Trooper 1 learned that the Governor requested that she be transferred to the PSU," her legal complaint alleges. Cuomo "wanted her on the detail tomorrow.”
“What did you say to him???????,” Boyle texted her.
State Police practice generally required Troopers have three years' service before being allowed to ask for assignment to the PSU, Trooper 1 alleged. Boyle told Trooper 1 to apply anyway, even though she only had 2 1/2 years of service.
“They changed the minimum from 3 years to 2," Boyle told her. "Just for you.”
Boyle was deposed by Cuomo's lawyers and testified "he was the one who recruited her for the PSU," not Cuomo. Boyle selected Trooper 1 "because she was talented, he was impressed with her work, and he knew Governor Cuomo was concerned with gender parity on the PSU," Cuomo’s new court filing says.
Boyle also testified "Trooper 1 was not 'singled out,'" as she alleges. A job posting for the PSU position "was distributed to the entire NYSP." His report the State Police waived a year off the service requirement from three to two years “just for [Trooper 1]” was a joke," the filing says.
The real reason Trooper 1 was drafted into the PSU was to increase its diversity. There was a "serious lack of gender diversity, and that [sic] when Trooper 1 was recruited, the detail was severely understaffed," several State Police witnesses "confirmed," according to the filing.
Attempts to reach Boyle by telephone were not successful; he did not respond to a voicemail seeking comment.
A photograph published by the State Police on its official Facebook page confirms the downstate PSU was all male in 2017, the year Trooper 1 was recruited to join the unit.
New York State Police downstate Protective Services Unit, May 3, 2017. Photo credit: NYSP via Facebook.
Photographs taken by this reporter, while I was working primarily as a photojournalist, confirm Gov. Cuomo’s State Police security detail was all male in the years before 2018. The photographs below show him surrounded by all male PSU members in 2014, 2015 and 2017.
Photo Credits: JB Nicholas.
Trooper 1 admitted during her testimony to James' investigators that two other Troopers transferred into the PSU at the same time she transferred in. One of them appears to be Carlyle Hunte. The Bronx-based Hunte testified in a deposition "that he was in the same academy class as Trooper 1, that they applied to the PSU at the same time, and that they were assigned to the detail with identical experience."
Trooper Hunte was reached by telephone. He declined to comment.
Trooper 1 was detailed to the PSU Jan. 2018. Her first assignment was to work at the Cuomo family residence in Mt. Kisco, New York. She worked perimeter security for almost a year before being tasked to be the governor's personal driver. It was a stressful assignment. Cuomo, a car aficionado since his youth in Queens, was a demanding protectee.
Actually he was the worst kind of backseat driver who sat in the front passenger seat despite standard security protocols requiring protectees ride in the back seat, passenger side. He also liked to go fast, and insisted Troopers driving for him drive faster than posted speed limits, Trooper 1 told James' investigators when they asked. (As if State Troopers needed to be encouraged to drive fast.)
Personally, she found Cuomo outgoing. He was "very positive, nice, flirtatious, joking around a lot, playful."
But twice Cuomo made Trooper 1 unconformable by suggesting he give her a tour of the Governor's Executive Mansion in Albany. The mansion has a public area on the first floor, and a private residence on the second floor. The public can tour the first floor on scheduled tours.
"And he said, 'Oh, you know, I could give you a tour, unless it's against any protocols,' and like snickered and walked off," Trooper 1 said.
She acknowledged Cuomo's invitation could have been friendly, but she interpreted it as an invitation to sex in his private second floor residence.
"So it was kind of like up to your interpretation. But you knew clearly what he was trying to convey in his message," she said.
Trooper 1 never took Cuomo up on his offer. It's not clear why, out of two possible meanings, she chose the one meaning sex.
However, Dane Pfeiffer, another State Trooper assigned to the PSU at Cuomo's Mt. Kisco home, had a romantic affair with one of Cuomo's daughters in 2020, according to an Inspector General report.
New York Post frontpage, Aug. 20, 2022. Photo Credit: screengrab.
Four months after Trooper 1 became one of the governor's drivers, Cuomo had a question about her attire: "Why don't you wear a dress?"
"Where would I put my gun?," Trooper 1 fired back point-blank.
Vincent Straface, the PSU's commander, was in the SUV and de-escalated the confrontation. He told Cuomo "'we wear business attire, we're supposed to wear dark colors.'"
"Stays in the truck," Straface texted Trooper 1 later.
The tough-talk appears to have appealed to Cuomo in some way. He asked to kiss Trooper 1, twice.
The first time "was in the summer," she told James' investigators, "at the Mt. Kisco house." The governor walked down his driveway toward where she was stationed, sitting in a parked State Police vehicle. She got out "to see if he needed anything. And he just goes, 'Can I kiss you?'"
Trooper 1 says she "froze and just said 'sure' and hesitated. He kissed me on the cheek and just said after, 'Oh, I'm not supposed to do that or unless that's against the rules or something.' And I was like 'Okay.'"
The second time she was sitting in a State Police SUV outside Columbia University in Oct. 2019. He walked up to her and made small talk through the opened driver's door window. Then asked "Can I kiss you?" Following a colleague's advice, this time Trooper 1 told Cuomo she was sick.
The governor looked at her, "almost in disgust that I had denied him," before walking off, she said. She also admitted he was a well-known “germaphobe.”
Stainless steel .357 magnum revolver kept by a New York woman raped by a cop, New York, New York, 2015. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
During the 32 months Trooper 1 served on the PSU while Cuomo was governor, he touched her twice without an invitation.
The first time she was riding in an elevator up to the 33d floor of the hi-rise building housing the Governor's New York office. They weren't alone; another Trooper and a Senior Investigator were in the elevator with them.
While she was standing in front of Cuomo facing the closed doors, Cuomo traced his index finger from her neck halfway down her back then “just said, ‘Hey, you.’ So I turned around and said, ‘Oh, hey, how are you, sir? ‘ And that was basically it. I kind of was like freaked out.”
The Senior Investigator didn't see it because he was texting. The other Trooper saw and soon after asked her "'What was that? That was creepy,'" Trooper 1 told James' investigators the other Trooper said. Trooper 1 agreed with the other Trooper, "'Yeah, that was creepy.'"
Still, she told James' investigators "I don't know what that was and kind of played it off."
The second time occurred in Sept. 2019. She said she'd been replaced as Cuomo's driver because he said they'd had too many "close calls." She stayed on the PSU, but moved to its advance team. The Islanders, a professional hickey team, were breaking ground for a new stadium at Belmont Park in Queens. The governor was headed back inside a building after a press conference. Trooper 1 held the door open for him, as was standard practice.
As Cuomo was squeezing his then almost-portly 5', 11'-inch frame through the doorway, he used "the palm of his hand in the center of my stomach on my belly button and like pushed back towards my right hip like where my gun is."
"I felt like completely violated because to me, like that's between my chest and my privates," she explained. "If he was a little bit north or a little bit south, it's not good."
An extra-large Andrew Cuomo in 2017. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
Senior State Police Investigator Fabricio Plaskocinski saw what happened. He asked Trooper 1 "if I wanted to do anything. I said, 'No, I'm all good.' And that was it."
Plaskocinski "acknowledged" in his sworn deposition for Trooper 1's case "he asked Trooper 1 about it twice and Trooper 1 confirmed that she was not offended by what happened," Friday's court filing in the case says.
Acting Nassau County District Attorney Joyce Smith investigated Trooper 1's allegation, found them "credible, deeply troubling but not criminal under New York law."
Cuomo spoke to James' investigators too. He denied inviting Trooper 1 to the Governor's Albany mansion, denied asking why she didn't wear dresses and denied touching or kissing her, except maybe “on the cheek at a Christmas party."
State Police Investigator Diane Parrotta (far left, tan rain coat) guarding then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo with daughter Michaela Kennedy-Cuomo and top aide Melissa DeRosa heading to the Capital, Feb. 25, 2017. Photo credit: Office of Governor via Flickr.
Three months ago, Trooper 1 reached out to another PSU officer, Investigator Diane Parrotta, for help, according to Friday's court filings.
"We now know that in May, Ms. Parrotta and Trooper 1 exchanged text messages," Glavin, Cuomo's lawyer, wrote, "in which Ms. Parrotta repeatedly demanded that Trooper 1 tell her what she was supposed to say." Parrotta allegedly sent some of her texts to Trooper 1 surreptitiously "from her husband’s and daughter’s phones."
When Trooper 1 apparently did not comply, Parotta "accused Trooper 1 of having been 'brainwashed.’”
The 20-year State Police veteran did not respond to this reporter's voicemail message inviting comment.
Trooper 1's lawyers have yet to depose Cuomo himself. He was scheduled to be deposed Aug. 23, but is seeking an extension to Sept. They did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Unless settled, there will be at least many more months of discovery before the Court will decide whether Trooper 1 has enough evidence to justify a trial.
THE FREE LANCE NEEDS YOUR DONATIONS TO SURVIVE. DONATE HERE.