The Andrew Cuomo story gets worse

Ugh.

(Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo)

The New York Times is out with an amazing story on former New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo — and, specifically, the role his sister played in coordinating smears of women who came forward to accuse him of inappropriate conduct.

The story details how Madeline Cuomo put herself at the center of a group known as “We Decide New York,” which was the primary defender of her brother amid a series of allegations from women that eventually led him to resign the governorship.

Here’s the top of the story:

The menacing posts began cropping up on Twitter last September just hours after a former aide to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York sued him over sexual harassment claims.

The tweets attacked the aide, Charlotte Bennett, in starkly personal terms. “Your life will be dissected like a frog in a HS science class,” read one of the most threatening, which also featured a photo of Ms. Bennett dancing at a bar in lingerie.

The post was part of a thread written by Anna Vavare, a leader of a small but devoted group of mostly older women who banded together online to defend Mr. Cuomo from a cascade of sexual misconduct claims that led to his resignation in August 2021. But it turns out, her tweets had secretly been ordered up by someone even closer to the former governor’s cause: Madeline Cuomo, his sister.

In the hours before the posts went live that morning, Ms. Cuomo exchanged dozens of text messages with Ms. Vavare and another leader of the pro-Cuomo group We Decide New York, Inc., pushing the activists to target Ms. Bennett, one of the first women to accuse Mr. Cuomo of sexual harassment. She appeared to invoke her brother’s wishes.

“Good Morning Just spoke and he thinks a distraction could be helpful today,” Ms. Cuomo wrote in the private texts reviewed by The New York Times. She suggested posting “photos of Charlotte In her sex kitten straddle” taken from Ms. Bennett’s Instagram account, potentially alongside more “austere, professional” ones of loyal Cuomo aides.

That seems to suggest — “he thinks a distraction could be helpful today” — that the governor was not only aware of the smear campaign but involved in coordinating its attacks.

One message that Madeline Cuomo sent to the group included these lines: “I just hung up w A again and he wants you both to know how much he appreciates ALL your hard work.”

Both Madeline Cuomo and a spokesman for Andrew Cuomo denied that he had been involved in any way with the group.

Which, like, what?

Read the whole story. It’s a remarkable piece of journalism.