A former executive assistant for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) who is one of 11 women in a recent state report accusing the governor of sexual harassment shared details of her allegations on Monday.
Brittany Commisso, who started working in the governor’s office in 2017, told “CBS This Morning” and the Times Union that one day when she was in the governor’s mansion with Cuomo he loudly shut the door to the room they were in, walked up to her and “put his hand up my blouse and cupped my breast over my bra.”
“I exactly remember looking down, seeing his hand, which is a large hand, thinking to myself, ‘Oh, my God. This is happening.’ It happened so quick, he didn’t say anything. When I stopped it, he just pulled away and walked away,” Commisso said in her first public interview regarding the allegations.
She said that before the incident occurred, Cuomo had hugged her in “the most sexually aggressive manner than any of the other hugs that he had given me.”
Commisso said she responded to the embrace by telling Cuomo, “You’re going to get us in trouble,” words she later thought were not “the best thing to say.” She said she had been “afraid” and “terrified” that staffers would enter the room and find them together and think “Oh, you know, is that what she comes here for.”
“And that’s not what I came there for. And that’s not who I am. And I was terrified of that,” Commisso added.
Commisso is one of the 11 women included in New York Attorney General Letitia James’s (D) report on accusations of sexual harassment against Cuomo. She was identified as “Executive Assistant #1” in the report.
She filed a criminal complaint with the Albany County sheriff’s office last week. When asked during the interview why she decided to file a complaint, Commisso said “it was the right thing to do,” adding “the governor needs to be held accountable.”
When pressed on whether being held accountable means Cuomo should be charged with a crime, Commisso said the governor “broke the law.”
“What he did to me was a crime. He broke the law,” she said.
Cuomo disputed Commisso’s allegations in James’s report, telling investigators: “To touch a woman’s breast who I hardly know, in the Mansion, with ten staff around, with my family in the Mansion, to say ‘I don’t care who sees us’ … I would have to lose my mind to do such a thing.”
Commisso called the governor’s response “disgusting.”
“It’s simple. I know the truth. He knows the truth. I know what happened and so does he,” she added.
Cuomo has denied ever touching anyone inappropriately and is refusing to resign despite top Democratic politicians, including President Biden and the entire New York Democratic congressional delegation, urging him to step down. The New York legislature is looking into impeachment as a potential avenue if Cuomo does not step down.
The interview with Commisso was released the same day the state Judiciary Committee, which is already engaged in an impeachment inquiry into Cuomo, met behind closed doors to discuss a path forward.
Cuomo was dealt another blow Sunday night when his top aide, Melissa DeRosa, resigned, writing that “the past two years have been emotionally and mentally trying.” DeRosa had served in Cuomo’s office for 10 years, and finished her time as secretary to the governor.
Commisso detailed another alleged incident of sexual harassment during the interview. She said she was once taking a selfie photo with the governor when he rubbed her butt.
“He was to my left. I was on the right. With my right hand, I took the selfie. I then felt while taking the selfie, his hand go down my back onto my butt, and he started rubbing it. Not sliding it. Not, you know, quickly brushing over it — rubbing my butt,” she said.
Commisso said she was nervous to reveal her name and come forward with her allegations at the time because she feared Cuomo’s “enablers” would “viciously attack me, would smear my name as I had seen and heard them do before to people.”
She said the interactions between her and Cuomo were “not normal.”
“Maybe to him, he thought this was normal. But to me and the other women that he did this to, well, it was not normal. It was not welcomed. And it was certainly not consensual,” she said.
Commisso said Cuomo should resign and seek counseling.