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Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh to face a lie-detector test over sex assault allegations against him — but wouldn’t say Wednesday if he’ll heed his own words in the wake of claims against him made by a former aide.
During Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation hearings in 2018, Cuomo issued an official statement that called the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford — who accused Kavanaugh of drunkenly attacking her when they were high-school students in 1982 — “very compelling.”
“Here is one basic fact that badly hurts Judge Kavanaugh: Why won’t he take a polygraph? Dr. Ford did,” Cuomo said at the time.
“If he does not take a polygraph test, it is the ultimate, ‘he said, she said.’ “
Cuomo also urged then-President Donald Trump to “demand” that Kavanaugh undergo the exam and later called Kavanaugh’s confirmation “a sad day for this country.”
Cuomo’s office didn’t immediately respond Wednesday when asked if he would submit to a polygraph test regarding the detailed claims made earlier in the day by Lindsey Boylan, who resigned as his deputy secretary for economic development and special advisor in 2018.
In an essay posted on the Medium website, Boylan — now a Democratic candidate for Manhattan borough president — said she quit after Cuomo kissed her “on the lips” without warning in his Manhattan office earlier in 2018.
She also accused Cuomo of saying, “Let’s play strip poker,” during an October 2017 trip on his official jet.
Former state Senate staffer Erica Vladimer — whose forcible-kissing accusations against then-Sen. Jeff Klein (D-The Bronx) helped lead to his 2018 defeat — said, “From my lay person’s knowledge, polygraph tests are not 100 percent accurate.”
“But if you look at it in the context of an elected official — not only that, but the governor of New York — living up to and acting based on their own words then, yes, he should be taking a polygraph test,” she said.
“If this wasn’t true, why isn’t he coming out and addressing it? Why instead is he hiding behind female staffers and flight manifests?”
Cuomo — who denied Boylan’s allegations as “just not true” when she initially made them without detail in December — didn’t hold a news conference Wednesday.
But his press secretary, Caitlin Girouard, said in a prepared statement, “As we said before, Ms. Boylan’s claims of inappropriate behavior are quite simply false.”
Girouard also released a joint statement from four current and former aides – John Maggiore, Howard Zemsky, Dani Lever and Abbey Fashouer Collins — who she said joined Cuomo for the Oct. 2017 flights on which Boylan was also a passenger.
“We were on each of these October flights and this conversation did not happen,” the statement said.
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