Former Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, has been marred in controversy since leaving office, including an ongoing sexual harassment lawsuit.
But the disgraced former governor may have just scored a huge legal win that could lead to him being cleared of wrongdoing.
According to a report from The Daily Wire, one of the women who accused Cuomo of sexual harassment has dropped her lawsuit against him.
Charlotte Bennett was the second woman who came forward with accusations against Cuomo.
Cuomo’s attorneys, Rita Glavin and Theresa Trzaskoma, sent out a statement claiming Bennett’s decision to drop her lawsuit amounted to an admission that her claims were false.
“Ms. Bennett’s decision to drop her baseless lawsuit should be viewed as a complete capitulation and a desperate attempt to avoid being confronted with the mountains of exculpatory discovery – including contemporaneous texts and videos that the AG’s office never obtained – that completely refute her claims against Governor Cuomo,” the attorneys said in their statement.
“After falsely smearing Governor Cuomo for years, Ms. Bennett suddenly withdrew her federal lawsuit on the eve of her deposition to avoid having to admit under oath that her allegations were false and her claims had no merit,” they continued. “If New York State does give in to her public pressure campaign and settles, it will not be on the merits and should require the public release of all the evidence so that New Yorkers finally know the truth: Governor Cuomo never sexually harassed anyone.”
Bennett was represented by Debra Katz, the woman who represented Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser Christine Blasey Ford.
Katz released her own statement on her law firm’s website.
“Mr. Cuomo has used these legal proceedings to punish Ms. Bennett and others who reported his sexual harassment, and to cause more harm to her, all at the expense of New York taxpayers,” Katz wrote. “In dismissing the federal case we thus hope that our client will be able to resolve this dispute and finally be made whole for all the damage Mr. Cuomo and his agents caused her.”
Bennett worked as an executive assistant and health policy adviser in Cuomo’s administration before he resigned in November 2020.
Bennett told The New York Times in February 2021 that Cuomo began harassing her in the spring of 2020.
Bennett said that Cuomo would ask her questions about her sex life and whether she was monogamous in her relationships.
She claimed he also asked her if she ever had sex with older men.
Bennett also claimed that on May 15, 2020, Cuomo kept asking her about her love life and seemed to fixate on her, saying she was the victim of sexual assault.
A few weeks later, Bennett said, Cuomo began asking inappropriate questions about her love life.
“He asked me if I believed if age made a difference in relationships and he also asked me in the same conversation if I had ever been with an older man,” Bennett told the Times at the time.
This is an ongoing story. Check back for further updates.