First Cuomo accuser plans to sue governor for retaliation

The first woman who publicly accused New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) of sexual harassment is planning to sue him for allegedly retaliating against her, according to ABC.

Lindsey Boylan, who worked in New York’s state economic development agency, first spoke out against the governor in December in a series of tweets, saying that he sexually harassed her for years. 

Boylan’s lawyer Jill Basinger on Wednesday said that they would be suing Cuomo and his close advisers following the release of New York Attorney General Letitia James‘s (D) report, which found that Cuomo’s office attempted to retaliate against Boylan after she publicly spoke out against the governor.

“There is no question that Lindsey was harassed, that she was subjected to a hostile work environment and that she was assaulted,” Basinger told “Good Morning America” on Thursday.

“But most problematically, she was retaliated against, not just by the governor, but by his inner circle, both inside the government and out,” Basinger said. “There was an entire conspiracy to diminish her and to hurt her credibility, and we find that to be the most offensive part of all this.”

Basinger said she is confident the lawsuit will be successful. 

“The attorney general and the investigators, after looking at all the facts, after doing an exhaustive examination, found with no ifs, ands or buts that Lindsey was 100% retaliated against,” she said.

According to James’s report, Cuomo’s top aide Melissa DeRosa asked Alphonso David, a lawyer who previously worked for Cuomo, to provide her with Boylan’s “full file” after Boylan’s December tweets accusing the governor of sexual harassment. David then passed some of the internal memoranda regarding Boylan to journalists. 

“Because Lindsey was first, the governor needed to send a message,” Basinger told The New York Times. “He needed to send a message to every other survivor out there that this is what happens when you go against the machine of the governor’s office.”

The report from the independent inquiry launched by James found that Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women, which he denied in a video message after James and her team presented the findings of the report. 

“The facts are much different than what has been portrayed,” Cuomo said.