Major female Democratic politicians remained silent Thursday largely on allegations of sexual harassment against Gov. Andrew Cuomo, though some of them have spoken out frankly on the issue in the past.
New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand was one of the elected officials who did not respond to requests for comment on the allegations of former Cuomo aide Lindsey Boylan.
Gillibrand’s reluctance to intervene in the growing scandal came despite him advocating a “zero tolerance” policy that helped force Minnesota Democrat Al Franken to resign from his Senate seat in 2017.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who also asked Franken to resign when she was a colleague in the California Senate, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California), and the generally fickle representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-The Bronx, Queens) were also mothers after The Post consultations.
Former New York senator and failed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton did not respond to a similar request for comment, Fox News reported.
Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan) issued a prepared statement saying, “All survivors of harassment and aggression deserve to be heard and … their case should be thoroughly investigated.”
On the contrary, she he tweeted “#BelieveWomen” in support of Christine Blasey Ford during Senate confirmation hearings on Brett Kavanaugh’s successful nomination in 2018 to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Boylan on Wednesday accused Cuomo of kissing her “on the lips” without warning in 2018 and saying, “Let’s play poker” during an October 2017 flight on his official state plane.
The claims added details to the allegations he first filed in a series of tweets in December.
At the time, Cuomo denied the allegations as “simply not true.”
He has not personally addressed her latest allegations, but her press secretary, Caitlin Girouard, said Wednesday: “As we said before, Mrs Boylan’s allegations of misconduct are simply false.”
Girouard also issued a joint statement from four current and former aides – John Maggiore, Howard Zemsky, Dani Lever and Abbey Fashouer Collins – who he said joined Cuomo for the October 2017 flights in which Boylan also he was a passenger.
“We were on each of those October flights and that conversation didn’t happen,” the statement said.