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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo came under fresh fire Tuesday over a “potentially illegal” call to the White House about the investigation of his abrupt shutdown of a corruption probe, a report said.
The governor has since announced his resignation, effective in 14 days, under threat of impeachment following the release of a scathing Attorney General report in which investigators concluded that he sexually harassed several women in violation of state and federal law.
Cuomo was reportedly “ranting and raving” when he got through to Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to then-President Barack Obama, in his call to the White House in April 2014, according to The New Yorker.
The accused sex-harasser complained about then-Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara for investigating Cuomo’s premature closure of the Moreland Commission that was investigating corruption, the magazine said.
“This guy’s out of control … He’s your guy,” Cuomo complained of Bharara, according to a member of the White House legal team briefed on the call that day.
Jarrett confirmed to The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow that Cuomo “did, in fact, call me and raise concerns about the commission.”
“As soon as he started talking, and I figured out what he was talking about, I shut down the conversation,” she told Farrow, he noted that any effort by the White House to influence investigations by a federal prosecutor could constitute criminal obstruction of justice.
Jarrett was concerned enough that she reported Cuomo’s call to the White House counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, who further reported it to then-Deputy Attorney General, James Cole.
Cuomo “shouldn’t have been doing that,” Cole told The New Yorker.
“He’s trying to exert political pressure on basically a prosecution or an investigation,” Cole said.
“So Cuomo trying to use whatever muscle he had with the White House to do it was a nonstarter and probably improper.”
The White House may have opened him up to sanction for violating state ethics rules — and could be relevant in the likely impeachment proceedings by the state Assembly, experts told Farrow.
“It’s highly inappropriate and potentially illegal,” Jennifer Rodgers, a former prosecutor in Bharara’s office, told the outlet.
“If he, in fact, called a U.S. Attorney’s bosses and implied, ‘Stop this guy from looking into me,’ that could easily amount to an impeachable offense,” insisted Jessica Levinson, the director of Loyola Law School’s Public Service Institute.
While Bharara’s office did not pursue charges, the former prosecutor recalled being alarmed by the governor’s actions.
“Andrew Cuomo has no qualms, while he’s under investigation by the sitting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, trying to call the White House to call me off,” Bharara told the outlet.
“That’s an extraordinary thing, from my perspective.”
Before he shut down the Moreland Commission, Cuomo bullied investigators to stop them looking at him and his cronies, its leaders said — comparing it to the methods the governor alleged used to discredit and silence his sex-harassment accusers.
“He obstructed, he lied, he bullied, he threatened,” Danya Perry, a former federal prosecutor who was the Moreland Commission’s chief of investigations, told the outlet.
“It’s an M.O., and all of the different components of it—he tried them on for size with Moreland,” Perry said.
“Every single thing I’ve seen in the past couple of months was foreshadowed,” she said of the alleged smear campaigns against some of the 11 women accusing him of harassment.
Perry also said that Cuomo inappropriately discussed his flagging sex life and “was definitely very, very personal and fairly intrusive,” calling it “honestly, one of the lowest periods of my life.”
Investigators also confirmed that the commission likely would have reached troubling conclusions about Cuomo’s administration.
“As we began to peel away the layers of the onion, he was behind everything,” Rep. Kathleen Rice, who was one of the commission’s co-chairs, said.
“I mean, the corruption began and ended at his doorstep,” she said.
“He did not want an investigation into his own dark-money contributions.
“He was pulling back subpoenas that were gonna go to friends and supporters of his—it was just really unbelievable,” Rice told the mag.
“The ultimate irony is that he was trying to root out political corruption — just that which doesn’t involve him,” she said.
An attorney for Cuomo, Elkan Abramowitz, insisted that there was nothing inappropriate with Cuomo calling the White House.
“If Bharara thought this was obstruction of justice, he would have said so at the time,” Abramowitz insisted to The New Yorker.
A spokesperson for Cuomo declined to answer follow-up questions, but dismissed the re-examination of Cuomo’s alleged interference in the Moreland Commission.
“This threadbare narrative has been litigated and re-litigated to death and no wrongdoing was found,” the spokesman has said.
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