He’ll forever be known as the governor who covered up his poor response to the COVID pandemic after being widely praised for it by the left and the mainstream media. Heck, he not only wrote a book about his “leadership” during the pandemic, but he also won an Emmy for it. Of course, such a fall from grace is bad enough for one’s legacy, but Andrew Cuomo apparently is seeing the writing on the wall and is trying to avoid one final stain on his legacy: impeachment for sexual misconduct.
According to a report from the New York Post, Cuomo tried to cut a deal with the state legislature: not running for a fourth term in exchange for not getting impeached. According to the report, Cuomo made the offer before Attorney General Letitia James released the report on the allegations of sexual harassment last Tuesday.
“It was something that was floated to me by the folks in the Cuomo camp as a possible option before the attorney general’s report came out,” New York State Democratic Committee Chairman Jay Jacobs told the New York Post. But Jacobs says he never saw it as a viable option. And the reason for this is obvious. Such a deal would leave Cuomo in power until December 2022. It was a silly offer to make that essentially would have let him remain in office without any accountability. There’s also no reason to believe that Cuomo would actually pursue another term now. Sure, Cuomo held a political fundraiser back in July, suggesting he had every intention of running for a fourth term, but that was before the report. Cuomo’s political career pretty much died when that report was released, and his chances of getting reelected or even surviving a primary seem rather small at this point. So letting him remain in office for nearly a year and a half would have been foolish to accept. Clearly, even members of his own party weren’t gonna fall for that.
But it looks like Cuomo is still trying to get out of being impeached by the Democrat-controlled state legislature. Cuomo has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, but members of his own party aren’t even willing to protect him in the aftermath of the report, which concluded that Cuomo had sexually harassed at least 11 women, in violation of both state and federal law.
Cuomo has so far refused calls for his resignation, which have come from members of his party, including Joe Biden.
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Even Cuomo’s closest advisers have reportedly told him it’s time to resign. The City reports that Cuomo has until Friday to submit any evidence in his defense. If the best he can present are pictures of him kissing anything with a pulse, as he did in that weird pre-recorded video last Tuesday, then I don’t see him swaying enough members of the state assembly to back away from impeachment. According to their report, the groundwork for impeachment proceedings has already been laid, which now puts the pressure on Cuomo to do what he’s resisted doing so far: resign.
Barring some unforeseen situation, resignation appears to be Cuomo’s only way to avoid impeachment. Cuomo may not want to resign, but resigning certainly beats being impeached, convicted, and removed from office.
I suspect we’ll know what Cuomo’s intentions are on Friday. He has to realize he won’t survive impeachment. The only option he has now is to resign. He may resign on Friday, but he’ll never admit guilt. Regardless, resigning won’t save his legacy. He’s finished.