Did Andrew Cuomo's spokesperson make 'damage control' calls? Accuser Ana Liss says she was called on her honeymoon
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo reportedly went into "damage-control mode" when a former aide first leveled allegations of sexual harassment against him. A spokesman for the Democrat leader is said to have called another former aide who later went public with her own list of accusations. Speaking to Rochester TV station WROC, Ana Liss recalled how Cuomo's spokesman Rich Azzopardi phoned her out of the blue when she was on her honeymoon in December 2020.
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“I thought at first that it was about work, like maybe it’s an economic development project that we’re working on here,” said Liss, who now serves as Monroe County’s director of planning and development. “And he said instead, ‘I have kind of an awkward question to ask you, has Lindsey Boylan reached out to you, have you spoken to her?'” She added: “And I said, ‘No,’ and then we hung up, and I remember thinking, ‘How many other people is he calling? Why is he calling us?'”
Liss, 35, who worked for Cuomo for two years before leaving in 2015, said the phone call came two days after Boylan, 36, first tweeted about being sexually harassed by the governor, 63.
While Boylan did not detail her allegations initially, she published an online essay last month alleging that Cuomo kissed her "on the lips" without her consent in his Manhattan office in 2018. She also claimed he asked her to "play strip poker" with him during an October 2017 flight on his official state jet.
After Boylan stepped forward with her allegations, it opened the floodgates for five other women to come out with their own accusations of being sexually harassed by Cuomo and other kinds of inappropriate behavior he indulged in. One of them was Liss.
Liss said in her interview on March 8 that after reading Boylan's initial tweets, she thought to herself, “Wow, that’s dangerous, good luck to you, I would never open my mouth, they’re going to crush you like a bug.” But after “this really started to blow up,” she continued, “I thought, ‘You know, maybe it isn’t as dangerous as I thought for Lindsey to speak out.'”
Liss also revealed how Boylan, after sharing her essay on Medium, called her "and said she was calling me because she saw me in the workplace and she knew I may have similar stories to share.” Boylan wrote in her essay how “two women reached out to me with their own experiences” following her tweets in December 2020, but had also told her that they were "too afraid to speak out.”
Liss has accused Cuomo of kissing her on both cheeks and grabbing her around the waist to pose for photos in Albany’s Executive Mansion, among other things. However, she claimed other women were allegedly “subject to much more explicit treatment than I was” by the governor.
“I decided to share my story because it’s a small piece of a much larger and more elaborate puzzle that I think New Yorkers should be aware of,” she said. “I don’t think Albany or state government, working in the Executive Chamber, is a safe space [for] young women early in their careers.”
As reported by the New York Post, Azzopardi said the call to Liss was simply an "attempt to give notice" that Boylan and others may reach out to her. “After Ms. Boylan’s tweets in December, she, and her lawyers and members of the press began reaching out to former members of the Chamber, many of whom never worked with her,” he said. “Those former members of the Chamber called to let various staff people know and convey that they were upset by the outreach. As a result, we proactively reached out to some former colleagues to check in and make sure they had a heads up.”