A year ago today came the political earthquake: New York Attorney General Tish James released a report by two private attorneys deputized to investigate sexual harassment allegations, that declared that then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s acts constituted sexual harassment under state and federal law. We said then that, given the weight of evidence, the governor should resign — and nothing in the intervening year has changed our minds about that.
But the production of the highly consequential 165-page report, which makes many unconditional statements about what Cuomo did, deserves more scrutiny. While it is surely better to give women who accuse men of misdeeds some benefit of the doubt, the job of a fact-finding investigator is to rigorously test credibility and claims. It is unclear whether Joon Kim and Anne Clark did so sufficiently.
While 179 people were interviewed in the investigation, only 41 transcripts have been released to the public that paid for the probe. This Editorial Board filed a Freedom of Information Law request for investigative memos summarizing interviews with all witnesses, only to be denied on grounds that they represented attorney-client privilege and attorney work product. We appealed, as neither of those exemptions makes sense: The questioners were not engaging in confidential conversations with clients, nor were their memos prepared in anticipation of litigation, but the AG still refuses.
Just one interview memo has surfaced, by accident; it was included in the criminal complaint against Cuomo for allegedly groping his executive assistant filed by the Albany sheriff (the Albany DA then declined to pursue criminal charges). That revealed relevant inconsistencies bearing on a witness’ credibility. Other memos will surely reveal more.
Unfortunately, Kim and Clark haven’t made themselves available to discuss the report — beyond fielding a few cursory questions on the day of the release, before anyone had read their work product.
Both Ken Starr and Bob Mueller, who oversaw investigations and issued meaningful reports on a chief executive’s misconduct, testified and answered tough questions about their work. Kim and Clark should too — and to start, James must release the documents on which the report was based.
