Chris Cuomo Played Outsize Role in Andrew Cuomo’s Defense - The New York Times

Chris Cuomo, the CNN host, participated in strategy discussions and shared a tip on at least one woman who had accused his brother, Andrew Cuomo, of sexual harassment.

Cuomo relied on a group of allies, including his younger brother, the CNN host Chris Cuomo, to strategize how to deflect and survive a cascade of sexual harassment charges that eventually engulfed him.

The previously unseen materials, including video of the former governor answering questions under oath, were produced earlier this year by investigators working for Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, and undergirded the damning report she released in August that ultimately led to Andrew Cuomo’s resignation.

When the governor’s fate was first thrown into doubt earlier this year amid mounting accusations, many of them assembled in person at the Executive Mansion in Albany for a de facto war council despite the raging pandemic, Linda Lacewell, a former top aide, told investigators.

“I think as part of the human condition when you — when you feel like you’re in battle you turn to those you trust,” Richard Azzopardi, the governor’s top spokesman, told investigators.

“As the situation started to accelerate, my brother asked me to be in the loop,” Chris Cuomo told investigators in a six-hour interview last July.

Chris Cuomo insisted to investigators that he had never manipulated coverage or spun other journalists to benefit his brother.

And he has told viewers of his show that he acted only as a brother to be a sounding board “to listen and to offer my take,” advising him to tell the truth, whatever it was, and eventually to resign.

Cuomo used state workers to produce his pandemic memoir, and one assemblyman said that it would be “reasonable” to infer a connection between the $5.1 million book deal and the manipulation of nursing home death data.

Cuomo wrote back after one such request.

DeRosa wrote to the governor’s brother that she had heard Ronan Farrow of The New Yorker was “getting ready to move” a story.

Cuomo said he was in a “panic” about how the governor’s team was handling the accusations and pleaded to “let me help with the prep” before drafting his own proposed statements for the governor to read.

Cuomo wrote at one point.

The lead turned out to be bunk, he told investigators