The menacing posts started cropping up on Twitter final September simply 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 private phrases. “Your life will likely be dissected like a frog in a HS science class,” learn one of the most threatening, which additionally featured a photograph of Ms. Bennett dancing at a bar in lingerie.
The put up was a part of a thread written by Anna Vavare, a frontrunner of a small however devoted group of principally older girls who banded collectively on-line to defend Mr. Cuomo from a cascade of sexual misconduct claims that led to his resignation in August 2021. But it surely seems, her tweets had secretly been ordered up by somebody even nearer to the previous governor’s trigger: Madeline Cuomo, his sister.
Within the hours earlier than the posts went stay that morning, Ms. Cuomo exchanged dozens of textual content messages with Ms. Vavare and one other chief of the pro-Cuomo group We Determine New York, Inc., pushing the activists to focus on Ms. Bennett, one of many first girls to accuse Mr. Cuomo of sexual harassment. She appeared to invoke her brother’s needs.
“Good Morning Simply spoke and he thinks a distraction could possibly be useful as we speak,” Ms. Cuomo wrote within the personal texts reviewed by The New York Instances. She prompt posting “photographs of Charlotte In her intercourse kitten straddle” taken from Ms. Bennett’s Instagram account, doubtlessly alongside extra “austere, skilled” ones of loyal Cuomo aides.
“No respectable girl would EVER pose like that,” Ms. Cuomo added.
She went on: “Bimbo photographs.” “Actually despicable.” “Unsophisticated women.”
Removed from an remoted episode, the unvarnished trade is a part of a trove of greater than 4,000 textual content messages, emails and voice memos between leaders of the group and Ms. Cuomo shared with The Instances this summer time. Collectively, they supply uncommon perception into how far members of one in all America’s most storied political households had been keen to go to rehabilitate a fallen Democratic scion and humiliate these they believed had wronged him.
Made up virtually totally of girls impressed by Mr. Cuomo’s dealing with of the Covid pandemic, We Determine New York quickly joined forces in spring 2021 to defend an more and more remoted governor as conventional allies deserted him. The group swarmed his critics on social media, bought Cuomo swag and pushed for due course of.
However 4 of the group’s present leaders mentioned in interviews that at the same time as their work appeared natural to the skin world, Ms. Cuomo, 58, started privately exerting management. Beginning simply weeks after the group was shaped, she steered its volunteer activists — many of their 50s, 60s and 70s — to prop up her brother and hound his accusers ever extra aggressively.
It’s unclear how a lot Mr. Cuomo knew about his sister’s efforts. He doesn’t seem to have straight communicated with the supporters. However within the messages reviewed by The Instances, a few of them sprinkled with typos, Ms. Cuomo repeatedly said that she was protecting her brother up to date and appearing at his course.
“I simply hung up w A once more and he needs you each to understand how a lot he appreciates ALL your onerous work,” Ms. Cuomo wrote final September. A couple of days later: “He’s seeing all the pieces.”
Ms. Cuomo made a degree of highlighting her brother’s curiosity and appreciation within the group’s efforts, as seen on this group textual content despatched on Sept. 5, 2022.
Madeline Cuomo
I simply hung up w A once more and he needs you each to understand how a lot he appreciates ALL your onerous work,
and your willingness to get this out as we speak
on LABOR DAY of all days!!!!!You girls share the identical work ethic.
I imagine we had been all raised fairly equally
which accounts for our
like-minded sensibilities
Sandy Behan
Inform him I couldn’t consider a greater option to spend the vacation. We’re there in your all the time no matter you want.?????????
Madeline Cuomo
All of us want we didn’t should go adverse ever
nevertheless it’s clear they’re by no means going to cease and depart us alone to do GOOD WORK till THEIR fact is uncovered.
Ms. Cuomo was adamant her position be hidden. She repeatedly requested her interlocutors to delete messages. And when a reporter for The Instances referred to as some leaders of the group for an earlier article, Ms. Cuomo instructed the ladies to falsely declare they’d no contact with the Cuomos, in response to Sandy Behan, the founding president of We Determine.
Ms. Cuomo, in an announcement on Monday, acknowledged her involvement with the group, saying she was centered on “defending my household” however insisted that her brother performed no position.
“I acted by myself with the ladies of WDNY, with out his involvement in any method,” she mentioned. A number of hours after the article’s publication, she amended her assertion to say she had solely invoked her brother’s identify so the ladies “felt their efforts had been appreciated.”
Mr. Cuomo’s spokesman, Wealthy Azzopardi, additionally sought to distance the governor from his sister’s efforts.
“The governor doesn’t personally have nor does he observe social media accounts, and he was in a roundabout way or not directly concerned in these on-line efforts,” he mentioned. “When he’s had one thing to say, he has not held again from doing so publicly.”
Ms. Behan, 71, mentioned she and others had been awe-struck after being contacted by Ms. Cuomo and had been keen to assist her with what they believed was a shared — if typically unsavory — mission. However by late final 12 months, the connection had imploded round a proposed documentary venture and Ms. Cuomo’s intensifying calls for.
Ms. Behan mentioned the bitter recriminations practically destroyed her group and its fame. It additionally shook her confidence within the Cuomo household she had as soon as revered.
“Madeline was demanding. She needed to ensure we toed the road, and we did,” she mentioned. “This was a method for her to get data out to learn her brother. She didn’t wish to be my girlfriend — she was utilizing us.”
‘It’s not that I’m doing something incorrect’
From the primary days she reached out in Could 2021, when Andrew Cuomo nonetheless hoped he may fend off his accusers and keep in workplace, Madeline Cuomo made clear she knew the potential worth of what she was doing — and the peril.
A lawyer and the youngest daughter of former Gov. Mario Cuomo, Ms. Cuomo had spent her life in political circles quietly supporting the political ambitions of her extra well-known relations and needed to maintain it that method. “Household has all the time been a very powerful factor in my life,” she instructed The Instances for a 1993 Vows column.
However the authorized jeopardy surrounding her brother made her choice for discretion much more vital. Chris Cuomo, the youngest sibling, lost his job as an anchor at CNN after the extent of his involvement within the governor’s affairs grew to become public.
“It’s not that I’m doing something incorrect,” Ms. Cuomo wrote to Ms. Behan in June 2021, simply weeks into their correspondence. “This has all been exasperatingly unfair. However something we’re related to will lose efficacy as a result of they may say we put you as much as it.”
The messages present that Ms. Cuomo went on to suggest that she may feed data and recommendation to We Determine New York so its dozens of members may name out “one-sided” media accounts and dig into “the details” about accusers like Ms. Bennett, who mentioned the governor asked intrusive questions about her intercourse life, and Lindsey Boylan, the primary former aide to accuse Mr. Cuomo of sexual harassment.
Ms. Behan, a retired promoting govt from Rochester, N.Y., was giddy in these early days. Like different ardent Cuomo supporters, she had shaped a deep loyalty to the governor throughout the darkest days of the pandemic, when his every day information conferences had been appointment viewing. Now, they suspected he was being railroaded.
“I simply talked to the Madeline Cuomo,” Ms. Behan remembered telling her husband in disbelief when the ladies first linked. “My first thought was she goes to assist us develop this group, assist us do what we wish to do for the governor.”
In her assertion on Monday, Ms. Cuomo mentioned that she initially contacted the group to induce members to not make “ill-advised” assaults on the governor’s accusers in his identify. “I defined to them that there was a distinction between calling into query an individual’s credibility and attacking them publicly,” she mentioned.
Ms. Behan disputed that account, and produced textual content messages displaying Ms. Cuomo introducing herself after which demanding that Ms. Behan take away a journalist from one other pro-Cuomo Fb group that she helped average.
Nonetheless, the tone was amicable at first. Although Ms. Cuomo took no formal position within the group, she fed speaking factors when reporters got here calling and quietly helped coordinate a sparsely attended rally for her brother within the days earlier than he stop, even signing off on poster designs. “Please advise as to what you need us to do ASAP,” Ms. Behan texted Ms. Cuomo on the eve of Mr. Cuomo’s resignation announcement.
After Mr. Cuomo resigned, the ladies had been misplaced. After they requested Ms. Cuomo for “some course” to maintain up the trigger, she may supply none at first. However as summer time of 2021 turned to fall, she took a eager curiosity within the group’s work soliciting voters’ views about what occurred to Mr. Cuomo, and shortly started speaking frequently a few rising effort to rehabilitate his picture.
By March 2022, Mr. Cuomo was publicly toying with a comeback bid, taking out television ads declaring himself exonerated, granting occasional media interviews and speaking publicly about “cancel culture.” Ms. Cuomo put We Determine New York on discover for a attainable marketing campaign and requested Ms. Behan to assist line up girls who may construct a groundswell.
The monthslong grind even wore on Ms. Cuomo, who confided in early March that her brother was “very troublesome to work with.”
“He additionally by no means admits vulnerability or expresses gratitude — or no less than very hardly ever do you see that aspect of Andrew,” she wrote in an e mail from her AOL account. “This nightmare has not solely affected him however quite my whole household, and it will be good to listen to him say he will get it.”
In Could, as probabilities of Mr. Cuomo operating pale, their focus turned to undermining his former lieutenant, Gov. Kathy Hochul, who had succeeded him. Ms. Cuomo, who clearly loathed Ms. Hochul, helped coordinate a gathering between Ms. Behan and Consultant Tom Suozzi, a Democrat difficult the brand new governor.
Days later, she inspired Ms. Behan to sharpen her criticisms of Ms. Hochul in a letter that We Determine New York was drafting to chastise Hazel Dukes, the pinnacle of the New York State N.A.A.C.P., for backing Ms. Hochul.
Ms. Cuomo prompt including “one thing to the impact of: From the time KH feebly took the reigns she has steered this ship uncontrolled.” The critique went on, with Ms. Cuomo accusing Ms. Hochul of “selectively coveting his accomplishments as her personal.”
When Chris Cuomo filed an arbitration demand towards CNN that spring, his sister requested the group to buck him up, too. “Let’s present some love,” she wrote.
A heroic photograph of Chris Cuomo rapidly appeared on the group’s Twitter page, together with a hashtag: #BringBackChrisCuomo.
‘Andrew is asking’
By final August, Ms. Cuomo had refocused on her brother’s accusers, typically sending dozens of texts and voice memos a day with marching orders that veered past fact-based defenses.
“KH and LB must be frightened into shutting up proper now — Sufficient is sufficient,” she wrote in August, referring to Ms. Boylan and Karen Hinton, a Democratic public relations specialist who as soon as labored for Mr. Cuomo in Washington within the Clinton administration. .
The uptick in exercise appeared tied as a lot to Mr. Cuomo’s evolving profession prospects as to the lawsuit introduced by Ms. Bennett. Ms. Cuomo instructed Ms. Behan that he would quickly be launching a new podcast, and his accusers “must know now that they’ll’t be attacking when he comes out.”
She appeared notably preoccupied by Ms. Hinton, who accused Mr. Cuomo of initiating an unsolicited “intimate embrace” in a lodge room many years earlier, earlier than he was governor. In an August e mail, Ms. Cuomo wrote that Ms. Hinton and Ms. Boylan had been hypocritical to complain about inappropriate office conduct given episodes she claimed occurred in their very own lives. “PLEASE,” she added.
She adopted up the following day warning her correspondents, “Please delete and don’t share — Put in your individual phrases first,” then endured days later in knocking Ms. Hinton, this time in a list-like textual content.
“Unauthentic
Uninspired
Unkind
Ugly motives
Underhanded
Gender descriminatong
Residence wrecker
Mainly,
Uuuuuuugh.”
The group posted to its Twitter page a number of hours later repeating many of the textual content as if it was its personal, and produced a video splicing clips of Ms. Hinton to make her look untrustworthy.
At one level, Ms. Cuomo requested a put up specializing in Ms. Hinton’s husband’s departure from the Cuomo administration, including, “Andrew is asking.”
Ms. Behan and Valerie Skarbek, one other We Determine New York co-founder from Illinois, mentioned they may by no means be sure the extent to which Mr. Cuomo — who was infamous for micromanaging his public picture — was concerned in his sister’s requests. However the group often complied.
Ms. Cuomo even mentioned attainable assault strains towards an unnamed state trooper who accused Mr. Cuomo of getting touched her inappropriately when she was a member of his protecting element.
“I believe we must always use present sentiment round police and authority in our favor” to undercut the trooper’s credibility, Ms. Cuomo wrote by e mail. “Her motivations must be thought-about as properly. This can be a girl with actual monetary insecurity.”
Ms. Cuomo strategized easy methods to assault the credibility of a state trooper whose accusation of Mr. Cuomo touching her inappropriately led to a lawsuit.
From: Madeline Cuomo
Topic: Re:
Date: August 30, 2022 at 11:24 AM…
I believe we must always use present sentiment round police and authority in our favor and reply by saying one thing to the impact that her being a member of the pressure doesn’t in any method imply she is infallible, and her motivations must be thought-about as properly.This can be a girl with actual monetary insecurity. I imagine her husband’s out of labor— and she or he had different bills and desires the cash. (straightforward sufficient to google articles)
…
Ms. Bennett’s lawyer, Debra Katz, referred to as Ms. Cuomo’s position “surprising however not shocking” and mentioned she would search to depose her and different potential witnesses in her shopper’s lawsuit towards the previous governor.
“The governor clearly relied on relations and buddies to attempt to smear and intimidate girls who got here ahead,” she mentioned, including that the photograph of Ms. Bennett in lingerie was taken at a non-public celebration the place company had been urged: “Come as your most outrageous self!”
The ways started to make Ms. Behan uneasy. “Even a slut has proper to not be sexually harassed,” she wrote by textual content the September morning Ms. Cuomo needed to flow into photographs of Ms. Bennett on-line after she filed go well with.
Ms. Cuomo prompt workarounds, however by then a rift had already begun to open that will swiftly flip the longtime allies into bitter enemies.
‘With out me, there would have been no we’
The primary, imperceptible fissures had began forming months earlier, when a filmmaker, Adam Friedman, approached We Determine New York for assist elevating cash for a feature-length documentary on Mr. Cuomo.
Ms. Behan and her board cherished the concept, and the group started pouring dozens of hours per week into the venture, which they hoped would assist Mr. Cuomo inform his aspect of the story. Ms. Behan thought she additionally had the blessing of Ms. Cuomo, who edited fund-raising letters for the movie venture and coached the ladies by interactions with the governor’s staff, data present.
However by final fall, Ms. Behan and several other of her board members started to concern that the Cuomos had been toying with them. The governor’s high aides demanded to see budgets, gained ensures of editorial oversight and, after in depth nagging, agreed Mr. Cuomo would sit for an interview — however then by no means truly made the previous governor out there.
Frustration boiled over final September, and the response was unsettling. Florence Jones, a Sept. 11 survivor on We Determine New York’s board from Lengthy Island, sounded off on Ms. Cuomo by e mail, telling her to permit “A GROWN MAN” to “HANDLE THIS W/O HIS SISTER BEING INVOLVED.”
Ms. Cuomo was furious, demanding an apology — or else she would minimize off the group and the movie it was so invested in. “Whether or not she likes it or not,” Ms. Cuomo instructed Ms. Behan in a voice memo, “with out me, there would have been no we.”
To Ms. Behan, the conduct felt like bullying, and the sample repeated itself when Ms. Vavare unexpectedly resigned from We Determine New York’s management staff, citing exhaustion and a dust-up over who managed passwords to the group’s social media accounts. Ms. Behan mentioned she was blindsided by the choice, however Ms. Cuomo blamed her and despatched repeated messages insisting that she deliver Ms. Vavare, who lived in Canada, again into the fold or lose her patron.
Ms. Behan and allies like Ms. Skarbek and Christine Fritz, 60, mentioned they labored for weeks to appease Ms. Cuomo. When Ms. Behan’s relations fell in poor health with Covid and Ms. Behan mentioned she must quickly step away, Ms. Cuomo instructed her “Covid isn’t what it was” and moved to chop off the documentary.
Issues quickly unraveled. The board accepted Ms. Vavare’s resignation. Mr. Friedman was so fed up he confided within the girls that he was considering suing the Cuomos. Then Ms. Cuomo came upon and proceeded to trash the filmmaker and Ms. Behan on to their members, accusing the pair of shady monetary dealings and inappropriately pocketing documentary cash.
Former buddies, together with Ms. Vavare, started to demand donations again and used social media to repeat more and more twisted variations of Ms. Cuomo’s claims. When Ms. Behan tried to defend herself and disprove the statements as just lately as Could, Ms. Cuomo warned her by textual content to not do one thing “you’ll have to pay for deeply.” And whereas the group did ultimately threaten authorized motion, it couldn’t afford to observe by.
Each Mr. Azzopardi and Ms. Cuomo acknowledged that the previous governor had been made conscious of the group’s documentary venture, however had determined to not pursue it. Ms. Cuomo mentioned it was the “solely time I mentioned the group with him.”
All of it took a toll: Ms. Behan mentioned she developed shingles from stress; Ms. Jones, 62, mentioned her hair started falling out. Their group all however collapsed.
Ms. Behan mentioned the expertise additionally pressured her to re-evaluate. She conceded she had been naïve in regards to the documentary venture, however maintains she had made nothing off it, sharing financial institution data to again up her declare. She mentioned she “made assumptions that will not have been correct” about Mr. Cuomo’s accusers, too, and believes that her actual transgression got here when she stopped assembly Ms. Cuomo’s calls for.
“We had been victims on this factor. We had been derailed by Madeline,” she mentioned. “I do really feel dangerous about not getting folks their a refund, nevertheless it was out of our management.”
Ms. Vavare didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Mr. Friedman, who was paid $50,000 raised by We Determine New York for his preliminary work, declined to remark.
For her half, Ms. Skarbek, 49, mentioned that shut contact with the Cuomos had rearranged her views on the person she got down to struggle for.
“It’s superb to me how I noticed Gov. Cuomo once I began this group and the way I see him now and choose his innocence,” she mentioned. “You begin a corporation to help somebody, and by the top you don’t actually help them in any respect.”
Kirsten Noyes contributed analysis.
