The two weapons behind Cuomo’s rise to power were his ability to destroy his opponents using the press and intimidate them personally. While the former weapon was public, the latter was private, and having lost his public weapon, with the press rooting for a primary challenger from leftward, his formerly private intimidation is going public with bad results. Using Cuomo’s bully boys as blunt weapons is backfiring.
The leader of the New York State Assembly’s impeachment investigation into Gov. Andrew Cuomo is warning of “severe repercussions” after a senior aide to the governor tweeted alleged “attempts to demean the Attorney General.”
A tweet from senior Cuomo aide Richard Azzopardi discussing Attorney General Letitia James’s potential political ambitions served “to undermine [her] investigation [into Cuomo] and send profoundly negative signals to witnesses,” according to a Wednesday letter from Charles Lavine, the chairman of the Assembly’s Judiciary Committee, which was addressed to top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa.
1. Rich has been the leading Cuomo bully boy. His nastiness, in public and private, long since became legendary in New York political circles.
2. James, whose investigation is both justified and politically motivated, is a walking and talking conflict of interest. You can’t investigate the guy you want to replace. But this is New York and the political mafia can do anything they want.
Cuomo had gotten away with murder over the years. Now he’s on the wrong end of his own weapon, the media, and he still hasn’t figured out that he can’t just thug his way out of the investigation. Nor can he keep outsourcing his dirty work to guys like Rich without having it follow him home.
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