Report: Longtime Adviser To Gov. Andrew Cuomo Allegedly Tried To Gauge County Officials’ Loyalty Amid Sexual Harassment Investigation

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — The Cuomo administration is dealing with a new controversy.

The Washington Post is reporting that Larry Schwartz, a longtime adviser to the governor, recently called multiple Democratic county officials throughout the state.

Schwartz, who is running the state’s vaccine distribution, reportedly tried to gauge loyalty to Gov. Andrew Cuomo as the governor deals with multiple sexual harassment allegations.

According to the Post, Schwartz says he did make the calls but never brought up vaccine distribution.

Sunday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio continued to call on Cuomo to step down.

“He doesn’t have any credibility. So I think an impeachment proceeding will begin, and I think he will be impeached, and perhaps right before that, he’ll decide to resign. That’s probably the most likely outcome right now, but I gotta tell you something, he should resign right now because he’s holding up our effort to fight COVID,” he said.

Beth Garvey, Acting Counsel to the Governor, released the following statement in response to the report —

“Larry answered our call to volunteer in March and has since then worked night and day to ‎help New York through this pandemic, first managing surge capacity, and procuring necessary supplies for the state, setting up the contact tracing efforts, and now assisting with vaccine distribution. Any suggestion that he acted in any way unethically or in any way other than in the best interest of the New Yorkers that he selflessly served is patently false.”

 

The Washington Post also reported that an unnamed county executive who was contacted by the governor’s adviser filed notice of an impending ethics complaint with the state Attorney General’s office.

source https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2021/03/14/larry-schwartz-cuomo/