Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says in a court filing he intends to sue a former aide who accused him of sexual harassment.
The move came days after the aide, Charlotte Bennett, dropped her two-year-old federal lawsuit against her ex-boss. Her civil suit against the State of New York is still pending and may soon be settled, her attorney, Debra Katz, told the Albany Times-Union.
In the court document warning of his own impending lawsuit, Cuomo accused Bennett of defamation in a Dec. 9 statement she made withdrawing her federal suit; Bennett alleged Cuomo’s legal strategy had been to “harass me and my family” through his attorneys.
Charlotte Bennett, a former health policy aide to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, participates in an interview in New York on Oct. 12, 2021.
Bennett began working for the administration in 2019, when she was 23, as a health policy adviser. She came forward in 2021 alleging Cuomo had asked her inappropriate and invasive questions about her relationships and sex life throughout her tenure in his office.
Cuomo’s answer was to issue what Katz called an “astonishing number of invasive discovery requests” for medical records ranging from optometrists to gynecologists, she said in a statement. Bennett dropped the federal suit just before she was to be deposed.
“Cuomo fully intends to clear his name and to ensure that Bennett and her agents never again repeat the falsehood that he sexually harassed Bennett,” his attorneys said Thursday.
Katz called his case meritless and said it mirrored the “long history of using defamation lawsuits to silence and punish accusers of sexual harassment.”