The aide who’s accused Gov. Andrew Cuomo of groping her and kissing her on the lips revealed her identity on Sunday as part of an interview in which she called his alleged conduct “a crime.”
Brittany Commisso, 32, told “CBS This Morning” and the Albany Times Union that she filed a criminal complaint against Cuomo, 63, last week because “it was the right thing to do.”
“The governor needs to be held accountable,” she said in a teased clip.
“What he did to me was a crime. He broke the law.”
Commisso — whose full interview is set to air Monday morning — also described how Cuomo’s alleged unwanted touching of her escalated over time.
“Then they started to be hugs with kisses on the cheek. And then there was at one point, a hug. And then when he went to go kiss me on the cheek, he quickly turned his head and he kissed me on the lips,” she said.
Commisso — who has also accused the governor of once reaching under her blouse to grope her breast — said she felt forced to endure Cuomo’s alleged misconduct because of his powerful position and the protection it affords him.
“I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything this whole time,” she said.
“People don’t understand that this is the governor of the state of New York. There are troopers that are outside of the [Executive] Mansion …Those troopers that are there, they’re not there to protect me. They are there to protect him.”
Commisso is featured first among the complainants in an explosive report released last week by Attorney General Letitia James that accused Cuomo of sexually harassing 11 women, nine of whom are current or former state workers.
But she’s identified in the 168-page report only as “Executive Assistant #1.”
“I believe that my story appears first due to the nature of the inappropriate conduct that the governor did to me,” she told CBS.
“I believe that he groped me. He touched me, not only once but twice and I don’t think that that had happened to any of the other women — the touching — and I believe … that was the most inappropriate of the actions that he’d done.”
Cuomo, 63, has repeatedly denied that he ever “touched anyone inappropriately” but has been in hiding since state Attorney General Letitia James on Tuesday released a report that accused him of sexually harassing 11 women, including nine current and former state workers.
He has not been criminally charged.
The report said Commisso testified under oath that Cuomo reached under her blouse and molested her during an incident at the Executive Mansion in Albany last year.
“I mean it was — he was like cupping my breast. He cupped my breast,” she told investigators.
She added: “I in no way, shape or form invited that nor did I ask for it. I didn’t want it. I feel like I was being taken advantage of.”
The report described the alleged groping as the culmination of a series of “offensive interactions” that also include Cuomo’s alleged “touching and grabbing of [Commisso’s] butt during hugs and, on one occasion, while taking selfies with him.”
Cuomo could face “a couple” of misdemeanor charges based on Commisso’s allegations, Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple said during a Saturday news conference.
“At this point, I’m very comfortable and safe saying she is, in fact, a victim,” he said.
Apple’s office took Commisso’s complaint during a brief interview on Thursday.
Commisso was hired by the Executive Chamber as a $62,000-a-year administrative assistant in fiscal 2019 and previously worked as a confidential stenographer for the Department of Transportation, according to the Empire Center for Public Policy’s SeeThroughNY website.
She is in the midst of contested divorce proceedings with her husband, Frank Commisso Jr., 37, a former Albany Common Council member who lost a 2017 mayoral campaign.
The couple has a daughter, who’s around 6 years old.
They have a scheduled court date in Albany Supreme Court on Friday, according to online records.
According to James’ report, Brittany Commisso “repeatedly testified that she felt she had to tolerate the Governor’s physical advances and suggestive comments because she feared the repercussions if she did not.”
She also “testified that she needed the income (including the overtime pay received from working on weekends), particularly as she was going through a divorce and was focused on not risking losing her job.”
In an April interview with the Times Union, which didn’t identify her at the time, Brittany Commisso offered a vivid account of the alleged groping incident, which she said took place after she was summoned to the Executive Mansion to help Cuomo with his cellphone.
Upon entering his second-floor office, she said, the three-term Democrat came out from behind the desk and aggressively embraced her in an overtly sexual manner “that wasn’t just a hug.”
“He went for it and I kind of like was, ‘Oh, the door is right there,’” she said.
“I didn’t know what else to say. … It was pretty much like ‘What are you doing?’ That’s when he slammed the door. He said, ‘I don’t care.’”
Although the sound of the door was loud enough that Cuomo’s staff most likely wondered what was going on, he wasn’t deterred, she recalled.
“He came right back and he pulled me close and all I remember is seeing his hand, his big hand,” she said.
“I remember looking down like, ‘Holy sh–.’”
Cuomo then reached under her blouse and grabbed one of her breasts over her bra, she said.
“I was just so confused and so taken aback by it … He never said anything, which was odd,” she said.
She also said she believed Cuomo tried to groom her for a relationship during the past two years through inappropriate behavior that included tight hugs and kisses on her cheek.
“It was never in front of anybody,” she said.
“He made sure that it was either at the mansion or, if it was at the Capitol, that no one was around.”
Brittany Commisso’s lawyer has said that she’s willing to take a lie detector test and wanted Cuomo to take one, too.
She earned more than $13,500 over her base pay in fiscal 2020, the most recent year available, according to SeeThroughNY.
Frank Commisso Jr. works for the New York State and Local Retirement System and is the son of Frank Commisso Sr., who has been an Albany County legislator since 1983.
Meanwhile, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson — who last month succeeded Cuomo as chairman of the National Governors Association — on Sunday said his predecessor “needs to resign” over Commisso’s allegations, which he said “could not be more serious.”
“No woman should have to go to the workplace and have to choose between a paycheck and being assaulted,” Hutchinson told CBS’ “Face the Nation”
“It’s a sad circumstance, but that was a very credible review and the allegations are very serious.”
During a Friday news conference, Cuomo’s personal defense lawyer, Rita Glavin, said the investigation of him was rigged as she attacked some of his accusers, including Brittany Commisso.
Glavin, a former US Justice Department official, said that emails and other records not contained in James’ report contradicted its finding regarding the chain of events on Nov. 16, when the report said Brittany Commisso was groped.
“This woman’s story, as stated as fact in the report, is false,” Glavin said.
“The documentary evidence does not support what she said.”
Brittany Commisso’s lawyer, Brian Premo, said afterward, “My client has consistently said and testified that she does not know the date.”
“She never said Nov. 16 and as far as their allegation that she wasn’t there the day that happened — that’s wrong,” Premo said.
“She was there the day he did what she alleged. She will further respond in due course.”
Additional reporting by Sam Raskin
