59 Democrat New York Politicians Team Up To Demand Cuomo Resign

Things just got a whole lot worse for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) as 59 Democratic lawmakers in his state penned an open letter on Thursday demanding that he resign because of his altering of data on nursing home COVID-19 deaths and the six allegations of sexual misconduct that have been made against him.

Democrats Turn On Cuomo

The Democrats wrote that Cuomo “has lost the confidence of the public and the state legislature, rendering him ineffective in this time of most urgent need.”

“We have a Lieutenant Governor who can step in and lead for the remainder of the term, and this is what is best for New Yorkers in this critical time,” they added. “It is time for Governor Cuomo to resign.”

Related: Bill de Blasio Calls On Cuomo To Resign After Sixth Woman Comes Forward With Groping Allegations

Forty of the Democrats who signed the letter are members of the New York state assembly, which has the authority to impeach Cuomo.

If they end up calling for Cuomo’s impeachment, they would be just five votes short of the 76 that they need to impeach, since 31 Republicans have already voiced their support for impeachment, according to The Daily Caller.

If Cuomo is impeached, he would be stripped of his powers immediately, and Lieutenant Gov. Kathy Hochul would become acting governor. He would only be able to regain his authority over the state of the state senate voted to acquit.

Related: Sixth Cuomo Accuser Comes Forward, Claiming Governor Touched Her Inappropriately

Chances Of Cuomo Impeachment 

Republican Assembly Member Kieran Michael Lalor said that while the letter was “definitely a step towards impeachment,” a couple more things need to happen before these proceedings can begin.

“If you’re a member of the assembly, you’re one of the only 150 people in the world who have the actual mechanism to remove the governor,” Lalor explained. “He’s not going to resign. Unless you’re also calling for impeachment, it’s kind of disingenuous.”

Cuomo has stubbornly refused to resign despite many calls for him to do so.

“It’s the threat of impeachment that gets governors to step down,” Lalor continued. “Calling for resignation doesn’t get governors to step down. All of my colleagues who are saying resign, they should really be saying impeach, and I hope that they will realize that.”

“We’re talking about the deaths of 15,000 vulnerable New Yorkers,” he added, referring to Cuomo’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in nursing homes.

“What could be more important than that? What are we doing in the assembly today, yesterday, tomorrow, next week, that’s as important as bringing justice to the 15,000 people who died and their families?” Lalor said.

Lalor Doubles Down

Lalor went on to say that proceedings to impeach Cuomo can’t begin until State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie allows a vote on the matter. He’s not expecting Heastie to say anything about this until he’s finished negotiating the state’s budget bill, which is expected to be concluded at the end of this month.

“He’s negotiating a budget with a very weak and desperate governor,” Lalor said. “He doesn’t want Cuomo to know, because he’s going to get everything he wants in this budget.”

“If the speaker came out for impeachment, he’d have 76 votes within minutes. That’s a great piece of leverage that the speaker has,” he continued.

“He’s choosing to use that leverage to get his budget priorities rather than using that leverage to check the chief executive, bring justice to the sexual harassment victims, the 15,000 nursing home victims and their families,” Lalor concluded. 

This piece was written by James Samson on March 12, 2021. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

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The post 59 Democrat New York Politicians Team Up To Demand Cuomo Resign appeared first on The Political Insider.

New York AG says state lawmakers’ Cuomo impeachment probe won’t affect her office’s independent investigation

New York Attorney General Letitia James said on Thursday that the state legislature’s newly launched impeachment inquiry into multiple sexual misconduct allegations against Gov. Andrew Cuomo would not affect her office's independent investigation of the claims.

Gingrich Accuses Biden Of Laying Out ‘Welcome Mat’ for Illegal Aliens – Will Shake The ‘Fabric Of American Society’

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich went on Fox News on Thursday to blast President Joe Biden and warn of the impact his immigration policies could have on the United States.

Gingrich Attacks Biden

Gingrich went so far as to say that Biden is “detached from reality,” and is laying out the “welcome mat” by signaling to the world that the United States is “open for illegal immigration.” He added that the results of this will be catastrophic and will shake the “fabric of American society.”

“When you’re dealing with a president who forgets the name of his secretary of Defense and forgets the name of the Pentagon, he could probably, I don’t know that he walks away but probably sit away forever,” Gingrich said. “Why would any of this affect him? He will say, ‘Oh gee, I guess that’s probably a problem.’”

“And I think that we really underestimate the degree to which he’s detached from reality and the degree to which people will, later on, look back and say, ‘Gosh, there were terrible consequences, why didn’t we know better?’” Gingrich added.

Related: Newt Gingrich Warns Trump Will Keep Dominating Republican Party – ‘Nobody Can Fight Him’

Gingrich Doubles Down

Gingrich continued: 

“Well, we did know better, but we adopted a policy deliberately that sends a signal — you know, everywhere in the world, whether they’re watching ‘Fox & Friends,’ whether they’re just talking to themselves, people gossip, and they learn and everywhere in the world right now the signal is out that the U.S. is a welcome mat, that President Biden would love for you to come stay, and the economic opportunities in America, despite everything, are still so much better than in most of the world.”

“You can’t blame a father or a mother who wants their child to grow up here, rather than in poverty, but you can blame the American government for not being honest about the cost,” the former Speaker said.

Related: Newt Gingrich Slams Trump Impeachment Lawyers – ‘Absolute Lack Of A Coherent Defense’

“This is going to be extraordinarily expensive, and it’s going to shake, I think, the fabric of American society,” Gingrich concluded. “And … my guess is that in four years of the Harris-Biden administration, you’re going to actually see an enormous influx, probably in the neighborhood of 6 to 15 million people.”

This piece was written by James Samson on March 11, 2021. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

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Jan. 6 aftershocks worsen as ‘Cold War’ in the House escalates

When a catastrophic tech failure delayed the start of a hearing Thursday on the House’s ability to punish its own members for misconduct, it wasn’t immediately clear that it would be the high point of the afternoon session.

Then lawmakers started talking.

The two-hour meeting of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties — billed as an academic review of lawmakers’ ability to punish or expel one another under House rules — quickly devolved into a tidal wave of outrage, a snapshot of the increasingly toxic environment that has enveloped Capitol Hill since a mob of pro-Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and sent them fleeing for their lives.

Democrats continue to seethe over their GOP colleagues who countenanced Trump’s efforts to discredit the election, and blame them for contributing to the atmosphere that inspired the mob. Republicans have largely sidestepped that debate, but as Democrats have begun ramping up tactics to marginalize the 138 House Republicans who voted to reject some of the 2020 results, some are beginning to bristle more vocally. And at Thursday’s hearing, the dam broke.

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) accused Democrats of an “outrageous abuse of power,” of “sparking a political war” and attempting to “criminalize” GOP dissent. He compared relationships between the parties in the House to a “Cold War” that would lead to “mutually assured destruction.”

When it was his turn, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) scoffed at the “waterfall of counterfeit outrage and indignation,” underscoring that no lawmakers had actually been punished for their words or their votes, but that surely inciting a violent insurrection was different than making objectionable comments.

WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 9: Lead U.S. House impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) leaves at the conclusion of the the first day of former President Donald Trump's second impeachment trial at the Capitol Building on February 9, 2021 in Washington, DC. House impeachment managers will argue that Trump was singularly responsible for the January 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol and he should  be convicted and barred from ever holding public office again. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Raskin went on to characterize the modern Republican Party as a “religious cult” warped in service of Trump, whom he called a “snowflake” for trying to “cancel” the 2020 election, all while his GOP allies screamed about “cancel culture.”

“You invented cancel culture,” he said. “This right-wing cancel culture has run amok.”

Johnson responded by asking for Raskin to withdraw his attacks on Trump, particularly the snowflake jibe.

“The name-calling of the former president ... obviously violates the rules,” Johnson said.

The exchanges were emblematic of the whole hearing, where the testimony of four witnesses was largely an afterthought. The witnesses largely agreed that the House has the power to punish and even expel its own members under the Constitution, but that the process should be deployed only in exceedingly rare and clear-cut cases when a supermajority — and not just one political faction — deems it necessary.

Republicans, though, viewed the hearing itself as part of an increasingly clear effort by Democrats to begin seeking ways to punish those they view as responsible for the Jan. 6 insurrection. That effort, they said, began just days ago when Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) posted a 2,000-page dossier of tweets by GOP lawmakers that called into question the integrity of the 2020 election. Johnson accused Lofgren, who sits on the Judiciary Committee but not the subcommittee that met on Thursday, of “outrageous abuse of power” and said it might have violated House rules since she tasked her personal office staff with the effort.

“This is a Rubicon that’s being crossed here,” he said.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, listens during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020.

He and other Republicans on the panel also argued that Democrats seemed intent on punishing Republicans who voted to challenge the results in certain states even though many of them, including Raskin, had done the same in 2017.

Democrats rejected that argument forcefully.

“No reasonable person can in good faith compare what happened on Jan. 6, 2017, with what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, when the president of the United states of America, aided and abetted by members of congress, incited an insurrection that resulted in an armed assault on the United States Congress that resulted in the deaths of 6 people,” said Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.). “On Jan. 6, 2021, many of us here today personally experienced just how fragile our democracy is. Yet here we sit today, some of us acting as if what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, never happened.”

Hank Johnson then read a definition of “seditious conspiracy,” a federal criminal offense, and asked whether a member of Congress found to have committed the offense should be expelled from the House.

One of the most tense exchanges occurred when Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) slammed the panel’s chairman, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), for accusing Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) during a CNN interview of being in league with the Capitol rioters and potentially helping some of them scout out the tunnels. Cohen interjected to say he never said he was certain that he saw Boebert with some of the would-be insurrectionists, but had seen her in a tunnel with a group of people in the days leading up to Jan. 6. Boebert has fiercely denied leading any potential rioters through the Capitol complex.

Jordan refused to accept Cohen’s explanation.

“You know what you did, Mr. Chairman,” he said.

FILE - In this Feb. 4, 2021 file photo, Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., arrives at the House chamber at the Capitol in Washington. Immigration-Sanctuary. Caption information: U.S. Rep. Bush, a St. Louis Democrat, filed a private bill Monday, Feb. 22, 2021, that would grant permanent U.S. residency to Alex Garcia, a Honduran immigrant who has lived inside a suburban St. Louis church since 2017 to avoid deportation. Private bills provide benefits only for the specified individual and are rare. Bush said only four have passed over the past 14 years. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite File)

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), a progressive freshman lawmaker who has drawn some of the sharpest attacks from Republicans, accused some of her colleagues of fomenting death threats against her.

“It dawned on me very early on that not all members are united in doing the people’s work within the people’s house,” she said. “Many are here to distract, detract and disrupt.”

As the hearing neared its end, Cohen returned to Mike Johnson’s complaint that Raskin had violated the rules by attacking Trump. He noted that while Trump was president, that rule might have applied.

“When you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all the way,” he said, citing the “West Side Story” parlance. But now that he’s left office, Cohen added, Trump is fair game for Raskin’s harshest commentary.

That theatrical aside, ironically, drew one of the hearing’s only glimmers of cross-party good humor.

“I don’t want to mess up the hearing,” said Rep. Michelle Fischbach, a freshman Republican from Minnesota, “but I just want to say how much I appreciated your ‘West Side Story’ reference.”

The comment drew a hearty laugh from Cohen, who then ended the hearing using a mini Louisville Slugger baseball bat as a gavel.

Posted in Uncategorized

Andrew Cuomo impeachment investigation authorized by New York Assembly

New York's Democratic Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie authorized an impeachment investigation of Gov. Andrew Cuomo late Thursday, while a majority of legislators now have called for Mr. Cuomo's resignation in the burgeoning sexual harassment scandal.

Mr. Heastie announced that he authorized the Assembly's judiciary committee to begin the impeachment probe, ...

Posted in Uncategorized

Bill de Blasio Calls On Cuomo To Resign After Sixth Woman Comes Forward With Groping Allegations

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is calling on Governor Andrew Cuomo to resign after a sixth woman has come forward with sexual misconduct allegations.

The latest claim involves a female aid whose description of events – through a source with direct knowledge – could land in the category of assault. 

The Albany Times Union reports that Cuomo “aggressively groped” the woman “in a sexually charged manner” after he had summoned her to the Executive Mansion late last year.

“They were alone in Cuomo’s private residence on the second floor when he closed the door and allegedly reached under her blouse and began to fondle her,” a source tells the newspaper.

The Democrat governor described the new allegations as “gut-wrenching” but insisted again, “I have never done anything like this.”

RELATED: Sixth Cuomo Accuser Comes Forward, Claiming Governor Touched Her Inappropriately

De Blasio Calls Allegations Against Cuomo Troubling and Disgusting

Cuomo up until this point has denied all of the sexual harassment claims being levied against him, asserting he simply felt he was “being playful” and that he was “joking,” something even de Blasio (D) wasn’t buying.

“Sexual harassment is not funny,” he fumed. “Who the hell tries to explain that by saying I was just joking around?”

The sixth woman’s claims have really angered de Blasio, referring to them as “troubling” and “disgusting.”

De Blasio called on Cuomo to resign.

“It is disgusting to me. And he can no longer serve as governor. It’s as simple as that,” he said.

RELATED: Cuomo Defiant As Top Democrats Call On Him To Resign: You’ll Have To Impeach Me

Cuomo Won’t Resign

Governor Cuomo has thus far remained defiant, refusing to resign even as alleged victim after alleged victim comes forward to tell their story.

In fact, he reportedly dared one prominent Democrat lawmaker to impeach him if they want him to leave the office.

“We need to govern without daily distractions. For the good of the state, Governor Cuomo must resign,” Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins – a Democrat – said in a statement.

Cuomo, according to the Associated Press, engaged in a phone conversation with Stewart-Cousins in which he practically dared her to impeach him.

“In a brief phone conversation Sunday prior to the press conference,” they write, “Cuomo told Stewart-Cousins he wouldn’t quit and they would have to impeach him if they wanted him out of office.”

And that was before the sixth woman had her claims reported.

“The latest report, and the fact that we can talk about how many people are bringing forward accusations, that it’s not one, it’s not two, it’s not three, it’s not four, it’s not five, it’s six women who have come forward, it’s deeply troubling,” de Blasio said.

Added the mayor, “The specific allegation that the governor called an employee of his – someone he had power over – called them to a private place and then sexually assaulted her is absolutely unacceptable.”

Fox News reports “85 members of the state legislature have called for Cuomo’s resignation or impeachment.”

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has blasted the former media darling as the “worst governor in America” and called for him to step down.

More importantly, she provides an important reminder that the sexual harassment allegations are one of many concurrent scandals Cuomo is currently facing.

“Governor Cuomo has been enveloped by multiple scandals,” Stefanik said in an interview with Fox News. “First, you have the nursing home scandal and the cover-up, which I believe is criminal. It’s a crime, a federal crime, and an obstruction of justice.”

“We now know that it’s over 15,000 vulnerable seniors who died because of Governor Cuomo’s nursing home edict forcing positive covid patients into nursing homes,” she added.

Secretary to the Governor, Melissa DeRosa, admitted in a conference call that the administration hid information on COVID nursing home deaths from federal investigators.

But it may be the salacious harassment allegations that actually bring him down.

“He just can’t serve as governor anymore,” de Blasio said Thursday.

 

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Half of NY legislators support Cuomo resignation, impeachment over harassment, nursing home scandals

Half of all New York state lawmakers are now calling for Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign after a sixth woman accused the governor of sexual harassment on Tuesday.