New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) released pages of transcripts and exhibits Wednesday from her office’s investigation into sexual harassment allegations against the state’s former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), according to NBC New York.
These transcripts follow the August release of the New York attorney general report concluding that Cuomo had sexually harassed several women, some of whom were state employees, according to The New York Times.
Among the documents released Wednesday was a transcript from an 11-hour interview conducted with Cuomo about his alleged misconduct against women, reports the Times. The transcript is 515 pages long.
In the interview, per the Times, Cuomo repeatedly said that he had not engaged in any inappropriate touching, stating that any touching that occurred with staffers would have been “incidental.”
Cuomo said that he has kissed staffers’ cheeks rather than their lips “as a general rule,” but admitted that he may have been kissed on the lips by an unspecified staffer, according to the Times.
“That’s what some people do,” Cuomo said, according to Times. “Never a romantic kiss — right? We’re just talking about a peck on the lips.”
He also offered alternate explanations during the interview for some of the behavior described by his current and former female staffers, and tried to dissect the details from a particular woman’s account in order to repudiate her story, the Times reported.
Cuomo was charged with a misdemeanor sex crime at the end of October in Albany following his resignation from office after he was found to have sexually harassed 11 women.