Lindsey Boylan was the first woman to speak out and reveal the sexual misconduct of former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who is now running to be the mayor of New York City. In this conversation, she explains how Cumo’s pattern of harassment, retaliation, and intimidation mirrors the authoritarian tactics of Donald Trump. Boylan describes how Cuomo weaponized state resources, silenced critics, and surrounded himself with enablers, all while cultivating a media image of competence and compassion.

Nathan J. Robinson

Lindsey, thank you so much for joining me to talk about this. People can read the Attorney General’s report if they want a full sense of exactly what Cuomo did in office. It’s horrific. It’s not just your testimony. They corroborated everything you said. There were a number of other people who were victims of Cuomo, and they talked to, I think, 179 witnesses. They reviewed tons of internal documents. It’s all there, documented.

You were the first person to come forward with claims against Cuomo. You wrote a public blog post detailing what happened. Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about his reaction, because part of that report is about what was done in response, after you came forward. 

Lindsey Boylan

Well, just to start out, thank you so much for having me. I’ve always contended that Andrew Cuomo’s abuse of women is really symptomatic of his larger abuse of power. And I think his reaction to me telling the truth in my Medium piece about his behavior and the toxic work environment that he harbored is exactly an example of that abuse of power. It doesn’t have to be related to sexual harassment. He employed basically his entire senior staff to come after me, to smear me. He connected his staff to the Time’s Up senior staff, to try and get them to sign on to, at the very least, not speaking out on my behalf, which they did not. Time’s Up is an organization in Hollywood that was meant to root out sexual harassment and assault in that realm, largely in response to things like Harvey Weinstein—notoriously bad abusers.

So Andrew Cuomo and his staff used their legitimacy to try and prevent support for me, which is all documented in the report. He also had [one of] his intermediaries, his former legal staff—who was then the head of the Human Rights Campaign—share some bogus smear attack on me that they had with the media. Various intermediaries of the governor’s, some of whom are supporting his candidacy now from Mercury Public Affairs, connected with my campaign staff—I was running for office at the time—to try and intimidate them from working with me.

And he’s basically started at that moment with retaliation, not really to silence me alone, but to silence the many women who would come forward. Because he doesn’t know how to be appropriate with women.

So he did that immediately as the sitting governor of New York. And since that time, both in and out of office, he’s used every state resource he can, including taxpayer-funded legal defense, to continue to harass and retaliate against me and the other women who bravely spoke up, not simply to try to silence us, but to make an example of us so more women and, frankly, more people don’t speak up about his many abuses of power, even beyond sexual harassment.

He’s weaponized the legal system. He’s weaponized taxpayer dollars. He’s weaponized every resource he can to silence not only his victims, but any of his critics. And who do we know who does that at the federal level?

That is why so many of us who know Andrew Cuomo say that he is essentially the same person as Donald Trump, and has a real tendency towards fascism and abuses of power that we see right now in DC.

Robinson

Doing the research for this article that I just did about him—I’m not from New York, so a lot of this was kind of new to me as I was doing the research—I was struck by the Trumpian quality of just denying the COVID deaths and then lying about it, and then lying about it more, and then when he’s caught just lying more and just continuing to lie in the hopes that eventually, I don’t know, people will give up.

Boylan

Well, I think what he’s done fairly successfully in the past parts of his career is really a version of manufactured consent, where the lie becomes the truth, and if you lie enough, and you scare people enough, that is the reality. And I think in many ways, that is what has become an urban legend of his COVID response, that he did a good job—instead of what he did, which was to have policies that led to the premature deaths of over 10,000 vulnerable patients in nursing homes because of the rapid spread of COVID. What he did was make $5 million off the book, using state resources to try and pump up propaganda around his success. And what he did was prevent, particularly speaking of the city and its mayor at the time, Bill de Blasio, from instituting both lockdown and various policies that would have saved lives and certainly would have helped New Yorkers through the COVID crisis.

So this is a person who really does manufacture consent. He creates the lie, he repeats the lie. He scares anyone who can tell the truth into remaining silent, and that becomes, in many ways, the reality that we live in, until years later when the truth is exposed. And that is the sign of a really bad guy in power.

Robinson

I mentioned in the article I wrote that I actually knew someone who died directly because of Cuomo’s decisions, an elderly prisoner. There was a campaign at the time to get him to provide clemency for elderly prisoners—who have zero recidivism, essentially—and he wouldn’t do it. And a lot of them died, including a guy I knew.

Boylan

And that story was heartbreaking, by the way. I read that story. So thank you for sharing that. He seemed like a man who had really come to help so many others.

Robinson

He was a good guy. It enrages me, not only that this happened to him, but the guy who really is directly responsible for his death never faced any consequences...

Boylan

But I think to your point, and to what we’re talking about: that is abuse of power. And that is the through line of all the really heinous mistakes Andrew Cuomo has made, or policies that he’s intentionally implementing, is abuse of power against anyone more vulnerable than himself. Which, when you’re the governor of New York and a nepo baby who’s been in power pretty much all of his life, most people are more vulnerable than you.

Robinson

Well, I wanted to go back [to the aftermath of your accusations], because I don’t even think we put all of it on the table. In the Attorney General’s report, it says that he personally wrote an op-ed to attack you, just a denunciatory op-ed. Eventually, it didn’t get published. I take it because people around him were like, “actually, this isn’t a good idea.” This isn’t practical evil.

Boylan

Well, I think, actually, no. I think part of the problem with his environment, the toxic work environment that reveals itself in the report, is that very few people in his orbit would say, no. It would require, finally, external folks to say, we can’t publish that. That’s defamatory. That’s a smear. That’s an attack on a victim. I’ve heard, in passing, that his staffer said that wasn’t a good idea. But I’m going to call sus on that, having known all of these people. I think there’s very little that they said no to him about because you were told very early that you can’t say no to him, and that was expressed literally and figuratively on a consistent basis, and you would rise in his orbit, in part, by doing whatever he said, regardless of how insane or evil it sounded.

Robinson 

And of course, he also leaked confidential personnel files about you to the press. They immediately called up the press.

Boylan 

Yes. And by the way, my posture on that, having never seen these bullshit, or whatever you want to call it, files, is I never had a review working for him—I never had anything of the sort... I view that as a smear. But either way, he retaliated against me and followed by retaliating against other women for speaking up against him, and trying to create the narrative that we are the bad people.

Robinson 

And tried to provide them with information to discredit you immediately. 

Boylan

Yes. 

Robinson

You were talking just there about the work environment, people not being willing to say “no” to him. And one of the interesting quotes from you that I was hoping you could elaborate on is [in the Attorney General’s report] you said that you experienced his “if he liked you” toxicity. But there was another toxicity, which was the “if he hated you” toxicity. So you’re experiencing the supposed “affection,” but also, many people are just screamed at, belittled, etc.

Boylan 

Yes, there are a few versions of that if he really hates you. On a more personal level, I’m not interested in dissecting him, but I honestly think he hates himself a bit. So that’s an aside. You would hear of his junior staffers, who were constantly berated. At one point I was waiting for a meeting with the governor outside his office, catty corner to the state troopers’ station outside his office, and he was yelling so loud at the senior staffer that I could hear the wall shake. It was so loud and so forceful that the state troopers came out of their office to look what was going on.

But of course, no one’s going to intervene, no one’s going to say anything, because he’s the governor, and the only person that they’re there to protect is the governor.

But there’s another version of that, where, let’s say you’re the former mayor of Syracuse. When you’re in that job, and he doesn’t like you for whatever reason. Maybe you’ve made a decision, or you feel he’s threatened by your power or your leadership in the city and the party—he would literally steer funding, steer announcements, steer anything related to power or social currency, away from you—

Robinson

Vaccination sites.

Boylan

Everything. Everything that you can imagine, he would use against people that he felt were not appropriately supportive of him. If he didn’t like your face, if he didn’t like something about you—he didn’t even have to have a reason. This is a truly petty, cruel person, and I think his sexual harassment really is just two sides of the same coin—that dehumanizing of people. Even if he’s sexually harassing you, basically it’s a power play. So the same was true for people he didn’t like. It was a different version of that power play.

Robinson 

One might have thought in 2021 that the Andrew Cuomo story had ended in something at least faintly resembling justice, or that the story had ended. Because, of course, he was forced from office. The report basically documents all of his lies and abuse, and that should be the end of it.

It isn’t the end of it. We are speaking today because Andrew Cuomo is currently the front-runner in the race for mayor of New York City. Now, to what do you attribute the fact that this man can rise from the ashes and still be a serious contender in politics?

Boylan 

I think we find ourselves at a really difficult moment in time, both in the country, and more specifically in the city. The city, regardless of where you stand politically, largely, has lost faith in its mayor in a time when the country is being governed by someone that most New Yorkers, I would say politically, disagree with to an extreme. Let’s look at the ICE raids, for example. People have lost faith in [Eric Adams].

So there was a vacuum of trust there, and there was a vacuum of gravitas that I think the mayor of the most powerful, important city in the country needs to have. [Cuomo] has 100 percent name recognition, and he doesn’t just have 100 percent name recognition. I would say half the people who support him, support him mainly because he has the same last name as his father. You see that in certain generations, especially people in the city who are supporting him. They say, I love his father, his father was the best. In politics, name ID is huge currency. It’s a lot like Anthony Weiner. 

Robinson

RFK.

Boylan

It’s all like Anthony Weiner on steroids. [Weiner is] running for city council, which is kind of laughable and crazy and really gross, but he has a fair amount of play, even though he’s a warped, sick individual, because of that name ID.

And I think you have to add into the mix the dysfunctional state party that we have. Kathy Hochul, the current governor, did not make a shift in leadership with the state party. Jay Jacobs still runs it. He runs it like the party machine politics of Tammany Hall, I would say. And you see that most pronounced in some ways in New York City. Those same forces that were there when Andrew Cuomo was Governor are still running the party. 

So that combination of name ID, loss of faith in the current mayor, and the infrastructure that still supports the same bad guys that it always has is still there. Add on top of that: how many billionaires who are supporting Trump? Billionaires, in general, are throwing money into this PAC for Andrew Cuomo. Add all the worst perversions of our democracy at this moment in time, and you see them at play in this mayor’s race, and you see them at play supporting Andrew Cuomo, which is, again, why I always try to make that connection, which is pretty easy to see, between Donald Trump and Andrew Cuomo. Because they’re manipulating the same system. They’re both creations, in some sense, of the media—sometimes the same networks for different periods of their careers. And it’s a scary reality that all of those things that are plaguing our country are kind of on steroids in the city of New York.

Robinson 

Lindsey, one of the things that has been very disappointing is that, as Andrew Cuomo has campaigned in this race, there have not been more prominent Democrats coming out and saying, “this is demented.”

Boylan

Disgusting.

Robinson

“This is disgusting. How could this person possibly be a contender?”

Boylan  

Yes, I think the most embarrassing one is Kirsten Gillibrand, just because she’s built her entire career on supporting survivors. And I just use that example because she’s my senator too, and she literally made her career off the backs, essentially, of survivors. And so for her to be silent, like so many others in the party, I think she’s afraid of him. She’s afraid of his retaliatory, evil, malicious nature. And, well, she has a right to be, and she also has a responsibility to do her job. 

Robinson

She’s a U.S. senator! If there’s anyone to not be afraid—

Boylan

Her job requires her to have courage! These people should have courage, or they should move on. And that’s why I say this is all really connected to the bigger problems of our country as a whole—and frankly, the world. We need people with courage, and this is a great litmus test for that. And so few have that courage. I unfortunately have felt over these many years now kind of like a human shield for many of the people who are much more powerful and much less brave. And that’s not me alone. Other women, other leaders who I stand alongside in this fight, and also nursing home victims’ families. But if I can do it, so can they.

Robinson

Right. And you’re not a U.S. senator. 

Boylan

No. I recognize I do have the privilege of a platform. I’m a politician, and I have a good lawyer and all that good stuff, but if I can do it, so can these really powerful people, and they’re choosing not to. They’re choosing not to because they value the certainty and the safety of their jobs, and they feel that Andrew Cuomo can affect that. If that isn’t an indictment, not only of them, but also of the kind of evil man that he is, I don’t know what is.

Robinson 

Well, just to conclude here, I want to emphasize what it would mean for him to succeed in his campaign for mayor. Because it would not just be that his past abuses were rewarded, or swept under the rug. It would also be that there will be future abuses.

Boylan  

It’s a free house, kind of like what you see in Washington. All the things that we've treasured as a democracy. Oh, let’s get all the white shoe law firms to do Donald Trump’s work. Let’s circumvent due process. Let’s arrest Americans. Let’s have ICE agents in bandanas not have to identify themselves. Let’s do all the worst things possible that we can. Let's ignore the courts.

That is a symptom of a powerful person who has been told the rules don’t apply to them.

The same is true of Andrew Cuomo. That same will be true of Andrew Cuomo. It will just be with a “D” next to his name, but there’s really no difference.

Robinson

And it’s a threat to all the staff of City Hall. This is a serial abuser.

Boylan

This man doesn’t know how to be appropriate with women. Frankly, he doesn’t know how to be appropriate with people. He just has a particular kind of abuse towards women, particularly ones that he finds attractive.

Robinson

And then there’s all the corruption, which we didn't even go into. 

Boylan

He’s owned by REBNY (Real Estate Board of New York)! He went to REBNY, and he said, you can trust me. And they said, okay, let’s pony up millions of dollars through your PAC that is coordinating with your campaign.

Robinson

Well, here at Current Affairs, we really appreciate you speaking out, despite all the efforts that were made to silence and punish you for doing so. And we just hope that New York voters will listen and will think, and that in this last month more Democrats will grow a spine and just say the plain facts for what they are.

Boylan

Yes. I have hope, and I also have great appreciation for the work that you’re doing, and I think it’s really important for the public to know and be reminded, frankly, of how bad of a person this is, so they remember that when they go in the voting booth. So thank you very much.

Transcript edited by Patrick Farnsworth.