Andrew Cuomo's office retaliated against one of his accusers by leaking confidential documents about her, NY Attorney General says

• Lindsey Boylan first accused New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment in December 2020.
• Moments later, his top advisors dug up confidential documents about her, according to a new NY AG report.
• Cuomo's office disseminated the files to reporters to retaliate against Boylan, the report says.

Top officials in New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office distributed the confidential personnel files of a former aide who accused him of sexual harassment in an attempt to discredit the allegations, according to a blockbuster report from the New York Attorney General.

Lindsey Boylan, who worked as an aide to Cuomo between 2015 and 2018, was one of the first in a wave of women to accuse the governor of sexual misconduct.

She called Cuomo "one of the biggest abusers of all time" in a December 2020 tweet, and detailed her experience with him in a Medium post in February. She said she resigned from the governor's office in 2018 after he kissed her without her consent, following years of harassment.

A 168-page report, which follows months of investigation from the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James, says that officials in Cuomo's office moved swiftly to discredit Boylan by distributing confidential personnel files to reporters.

According to the report, Melissa DeRosa, Cuomo's top aide, saw Boylan's tweet and asked Alphonso David - who previously served as Cuomo's top lawyer, and now works as the president of the Human Rights Campaign - for Boylan's "full file."

David sent those to Rich Azzopardi, a top Cuomo advisor. Azzopardi sent those files to reporters at The New York Times, the Associated Press, The New York Post, and other publications, according to the report.

"The evidence obtained in our investigation revealed that the complainants' fears of retaliation were justified," the report says. "In response to Ms. Boylan's allegation of sexual harassment, first made in a tweet on December 13, 2020, the Executive Chamber engaged in a series of responsive actions that were intended to discredit and disparage Ms. Boylan."

The confidential files included documentation that appeared to be protected by attorney-client privilege, according to the report. And they referenced apparently unflattering accounts of Boylan's experience as a manager, according to a March New York Times article.

But the AG's report said the documents did not actually discredit Boylan. While Azzopardi testified that he leaked the files to prove that Boylan was fired, the files actually "state that Ms. Boylan resigned voluntarily," the report concludes.

The Attorney General's report also details the lengths that DeRosa went to personally protect Cuomo from any potential fallout from the leak.

"According to Ms. DeRosa, she only notified the Governor about releasing the Confidential Files to the press after the Executive Chamber did so, because she wanted to protect him from any criticism," the report says. "The Governor testified that he did not recall having been in any conversation about disclosing the Confidential Files, and that he only learned about it after the fact from the press."

The AG's report includes additional details about Boylan's experience working for Cuomo. She testified that the experience was "humiliating."

"I've been sexually harassed throughout my career, but not in a way where the whole environment was set up to feed the predator and this and every interaction I had with the Governor and the culture felt like it was all to feed the predator," Boylan told investigators.

"I had worked my whole life to get to a point where I would be taken seriously and I wasn't being taken seriously and I worked so hard to be some little doll for the Governor of New York and that was deeply humiliating," she added.