The Albany County District Attorney is reportedly going to drop groping charges against ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo, days ahead of the former head of state’s arraignment in court, according to a report by the Times Union.
Cuomo was slated to go to court Friday afternoon, Jan. 7, over misdemeanor charges of groping former aide Brittany Commisso, 33, at the Governor’s Mansion in December 2020.
Commisso’s was among the most serious allegations from the bombshell report by State Attorney General Letitia James’s office into sexual misconduct accusations against the former governor.
Cuomo denies Commisso’s allegations.
The paper reported that prosecutors with DA David Soares’s office on Monday told her they weren’t moving forward because of the way the criminal complaint had been filed in local court by Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple in late October.
Apple filed the complaint without the DA or Commisso’s legal team knowing about it.
The outgoing Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance ended his office’s probe into the Cuomo administration’s oversight of nursing homes during the pandemic on Thursday, just days before incoming DA Alvin Bragg took over the office, according to the New York Post, with a lawyer for the onetime governor telling the paper the prosecutor’s office didn’t find evidence that the Executive Chamber broke the law.
Both the Westchester County and Nassau County district attorneys also declined to file charges against Cuomo over sexual harassment allegations in recent weeks, saying the accusations were credible but not criminal under New York law.
The Albany DA’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.
This story first appeared on amNY.com.
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