'I WAS THERE'
Cuomo accuser Charlotte Bennett claims Gov had someone ELSE take his own mandatory sexual harassment training
GOVERNOR Andrew Cuomo had a staff member take his mandatory workplace sexual harassment training course and signed the certificate as if he had completed it, one of his accusers claims.
The New York governor's former aide Charlotte Bennett, 25, in a bombshell interview aired on CBS on Friday night.
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“In 2019, he did not take the sexual harassment training,” Bennett told anchor Norah O’Donnell.
O’Donnell asked, “How do you know that?”
“I was there,” Bennett replied.
“I heard Stephanie, say, ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this for you,'” Bennett said, referring to Cuomo’s office director Stephanie Benton.
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Bennett said she was “making a joke about the fact that she was completing the training for him” when she “heard her at the end ask him to sign the certificate.”
Bennett’s claim runs counter to ’s statement on the matter on Wednesday.
Asked by a reporter if he had done the sexual harassment training, Cuomo replied: “The short answer is yes.”
The governor’s office in a statement told CBS that Benton “categorically denies the exchange” and said it “is not true.”
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On Friday, Bennett’s lawyer Debra Katz sent a letter asking state Attorney General Letitia James to make sure that Cuomo’s office preserves evidence surrounding her client’s sexual harassment claims.
Katz said her request was urgent and “heightened by recent new reports that the Governor’s staff modified government reports related to other matters.”
In the first part of Bennett’s CBS interview aired on Thursday, who had a bad temper.
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“He lets his temper and his anger rule the office, but he was very sweet to me for a year in the hopes that maybe one day, when he came onto me, I would think we were friends or that it was appropriate or that it was OK,” Bennett said.
Over the past week, at least five of Cuomo’s staff members have quit as his scandals intensify and demands mount for him to resign as governor.
Cuomo’s office on Friday confirmed that health care data analyst Erin Hammond and scheduler Sophie Boldison had quit.
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Bennett, who was a health and police adviser in the governor’s administration until November, alleges that Cuomo asked her inappropriate questions about her sex life and whether she previously had sex with older men.
Her allegations came three days after another former aide, Lindsey Boylan, claimed Cuomo kissed her on the lips without her consent and suggested that they play strip poker.
A third woman, Anna Ruch, then accused Cuomo of touching her bare lower back, grabbing her cheeks and asking to kiss her at a wedding in September 2019.
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