Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is trying to recoup his legal expenses and more in his case against a state trooper who accused him of sexual harassment.
Cuomo claims the state trooper’s lawsuit was part of a scheme by the state police force to attack him while he was governor.
“Trooper 1’s allegations against him are false and were part and parcel of a plan to attack Governor Cuomo that Trooper 1 and other members of the NYSP planned, coordinated, and executed because they were disgruntled with Governor Cuomo for reasons entirely unrelated to any purported harassment or retaliation,” the filing reads.
The former governor is asking for $8.6 million in “interest, attorney’s fees, costs, and disbursements, as permitted by law or statute.” Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi told the Washington Examiner that “whatever is recovered in legal fees would be returned to taxpayers.”
Azzopardi is also suing the trooper and her lawyers for “roping him into” their lawsuit against Cuomo.
Cuomo’s attorney, Rita Glavin, said the trooper “copied and pasted” Attorney General Letitia James’s report into allegations against him for sexual harassment.
“Trooper 1 copied and pasted the AG’s since-discredited report into her complaint, relying on allegations of women she did not know,” Glavin said in a statement shared with the Washington Examiner.
“We repeatedly asked Trooper 1 to drop those women from her suit to avoid this costly and unnecessary litigation, but she refused,” Glavin added. “To avoid time intensive discovery and obtain critical information for the defense, we also sought the evidence underlying the $14 million reports that taxpayers had already paid for, but the AG fought us in court, spending three years and millions more taxpayer dollars to hide the evidence. As a result, defense costs ballooned and nonparty witnesses were roped into the case. All of these decisions were outside of Governor Cuomo’s control.”
Cuomo has not paid for any of the litigation associated with his administration — the state has, which the state comptroller’s office estimates has cost taxpayers over $61 million.
“Trooper 1 could stop this at any moment by limiting her case to her own allegations, but she won’t,” Glavin continued. “This case continues to fall apart — retaliation claims against the governor have been dropped and co-defendants have been dismissed — and we expect it will continue to wither on the vine because these allegations are simply false.”
Cuomo’s attorneys are seeking for the case to be dropped “with prejudice,” meaning it cannot be brought again. They are also seeking an expanded order of discovery, which could include dozens of people named in James’s report, which found that Cuomo sexually harassed multiple state employees.
A spokesperson for James told the New York Post that her office stands behind the investigation and “the former Governor bears responsibility for his own actions, full stop.”
Cuomo has denied any wrongdoing in several allegations of sexual harassment leveled against him. The trooper’s attorney, Valdi Licul, slammed Cuomo in a statement to the outlet, saying there was “overwhelming evidence” that he engaged in sexual harassment.
“That hard-working taxpayers have had to pay millions of dollars – and counting – to fund Cuomo’s defense and his continued attacks on his victims is astounding,” Licul said.
COMER ASKS DOJ TO CHARGE CUOMO OVER ‘CALCULATED COVER-UP’ OF NURSING HOME DEATHS
Cuomo is a candidate in New York’s 2025 mayoral election and is considered the front-runner.
His competitors in the Democratic primary have often cited Cuomo’s sexual harassment allegations to attack him, and many of them have united against the former governor, including state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani and city comptroller Brad Lander.
