“Near the end of it, he looked up at me and he said, ‘You know, by the way, you know people talk in the office, and you can never tell anyone about anything we talk about or, you know, anything, right?’” the woman told The Times Union. “I said, ‘I understand.’ He said, ‘Well, you know, I could get in big trouble, you know that.’ I said, ‘I understand, governor.’ And he said, ‘OK.’”
On Wednesday, Mariann Wang, a lawyer for Ms. McGrath, said the Times Union report was “consistent with my client’s observations and experience working for the governor.”
“The governor’s behavior is that of a classic bully and predator: Groom, manipulate, slowly move the boundaries, then threaten and punish if anyone dares push back,” Ms. Wang said.
The sexual harassment scandal engulfing Mr. Cuomo began in late February with the accounts of two former employees, Lindsey Boylan, a former economic development official, and Charlotte Bennett, an executive assistant and senior briefer. Among other allegations, Ms. Boylan said that the governor kissed her in his Manhattan office in 2018, something Mr. Cuomo stridently denied.
Days after Ms. Boylan posted specifics of her allegations in a post on Medium, Ms. Bennett told The Times that Mr. Cuomo had peppered her with questions about her sex life and willingness to sleep with older men during a meeting in his Capitol office last June.
In a statement released shortly after Ms. Bennett’s account was published, the governor acknowledged that he sometimes had made comments that “may have been insensitive or too personal,” adding that such comments may “have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation.”
The unidentified woman described an intense period since news of her groping allegations arose in early March, saying she had lost weight even as she has continued to work in the State Capitol. She had not previously spoken to the media and did not file a formal complaint at work.
She said she had been worried about her job security, as she has a small child.
“If I told someone, I’m done,” she said. “And who do you tell?”