A former aide to Governor Andrew Cuomo described how he saw her in an act of pressure, “caught her in a kind of dance floor” and then hired her for his office, where he went on to “verbally mistreat her.” and mentally. ” He told New York magazine, recalling how he would criticize his outfits and once threatened to “end” his career for not transferring a phone call.
The former staff member, identified only as Kaitlin, spoke with New York over an article published Friday as dozens of Democratic lawmakers at the state and federal levels asked Cuomo to resign over allegations of sexual harassment for part of six women and the scandal still swirls over the manipulation of the coronavirus by its administration in residences.
Kaitlin first met Cuomo in 2016 while working at a pressure company organizing an event for the governor, he said in New York.
When he left, Cuomo stopped to introduce himself to the event workers, including Kaitlin.
The governor acknowledged Kaitlin for a previous job he had with a Democratic police officer and told him he would soon return to government, working at the state level, he said.
“Then he caught me with a kind of dance floor,” he recalled, as a photographer escaped. “I thought, ‘This is the weirdest interaction I’ve ever had in my life … Don’t touch me.'”
Within a week, Kaitlin received a phone call from the governor’s office asking him to interview her for a job, even though she had never given her contact information to anyone in Cuomo’s circle, she said.
“We all knew this was just what it looked like,” Kaitlin said in New York. “Why would you ask someone to come two days after having a two-minute interaction at a party?”
Although Kaitlin took the job on account of her career, she soon regretted it, she told New York.
She often had to run out of the shower in the morning to meet Cuomo at his Midtown Manhattan office, simply because he decided to leave for work early, he recalled.
Then, when she managed to arrive on time, Cuomo wondered why she didn’t seem united.
“Have you decided not to prepare today?” “He reminded her by asking. ‘Or,’ Didn’t you put on make-up today? ‘”
Kaitlin added that she constantly felt pressure to wear designer clothes and high heels to meet the governor’s expectations, a goal she struggled to meet on her salary.
The work itself was also degrading, with Cuomo regularly losing his temper when he failed to transfer a phone call using the thick touch-tone keypad, Kaitlin said.
“You can’t figure out f-king phones – I’ll finish her career,” he reminded her once he threatened her.
When Kaitlin offered Cuomo his cell phone number on a different day, he recalled, the governor acted as if it were his.
“I thought it was a normal thing to offer to your boss,” he said.
At a Super Bowl party, shortly after he started working at Cuomo, the governor began a conversation with a young woman, who was a member of the audience, with a dove tattooed on her hand, Kaitlin said.
At an office meeting the next morning, Cuomo directed his aides to find the tattooed woman and potentially hire her from government staff, said Kaitlin, who gave her a mysterious flashback to how she was hired.
While recalling that Cuomo asked her questions about her married life, as reported by some of the defendants, Kaitlin said she was not sure if any of her experiences constituted sexual harassment in the workplace (as they have bequeathed five other current or former members of Cuomo), he said he felt his time at the governor’s job was a living hell.
He said in New York that he felt “verbally and mentally abused by him and his staff” and that he considered the work environment to be “a form of coercive control.”
Cuomo’s office declined to comment to The Post on the global New York piece.
A Cuomo spokesman said in New York, “There are now and never have been expectations of wearing certain clothes or high heels.”
Additional reports by Bernadette Hogan