NY Democrat Tells CNN Gov. Cuomo Demanded Immediate Retraction About Covid Criticism: ‘He Asked Me to Lie to Cover Up for His Staff’
New York assemblyman Ron Kim (D) added more details to his account of how New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo verbally threatened him and pressed him to back off his public criticism over how the state handled nursing home deaths.
During an appearance on CNN Erin Burnett OutFront, Kim elaborated on previous comments he made to CNN and the New York Times in which he claims Cuomo personally threatened to “destroy” him in a phone call last Thursday. That call from the governor was prompted by Kim and several other New York state representative publicly criticizing the New York governor for hiding information about the true nature of Covid nursing home deaths.
“Assemblyman, I know this is an issue you’ve cared about for a long time, but please tell me about this call with the governor,” Burnett said.
“The governor called for about ten minutes, it seemed like one hour,” Kim replied, saying Cuomo pressed him “to issue a statement that invalidated what I heard. He asked me to lie to cover up for his staff.”
After noting that he took the call with his wife and family nearby, Kim elaborated on how he felt threatened by the tenor of Cuomo’s rhetoric.
“I was right about to bathe my kids,” Kim explained. “It really just put, you know, my family and my wife into shock and trauma for many hours, she couldn’t get any sleep that night.”
“He said I haven’t seen his anger, I haven’t seen his wrath,” Kim continued, before reiterating the “destroy” threat from previous reports and adding in that Cuomo issued an ultimatum demanding an immediate retraction of the criticism. “At one point, he said, asked me if I was a lawyer, and I said no, and he said ‘You obviously then don’t understand what you heard, and this is what you heard and this is what you’re going to say. This is what you’re going to write tonight and issue a statement, not tomorrow, tonight. That’s how we will move forward.’ Those are his words.”
Burnett then noted that the Cuomo administration is strongly denying Kim’s account.
“They are pushing back,” the CNN host noted, reading a statement from senior Cuomo adviser Rich Azzopardi. “The statement says ‘Mr. Kim is lying about his conversation with Governor Cuomo Thursday night. I know because I was one of the three other people in the room when the phone call occurred… At no time did anyone threaten to ‘destroy’ anyone with their ‘wrath,’ nor engage in a ‘coverup.’ That’s beyond the pale and part of a year’s long pattern of lies of Mr. Kim against this administration.'”
“What’s your response? They are calling you a liar,” Burnett asked.
“Governor Cuomo is very good at implicating his aides and he’s been trying to implicate me,” Kim said. “She said she hid that information, that was what the governor did. And because I called out and because I refused to lie for them, now they get to threaten my career?”
“My wife, you know, that night was very, very troubling because we couldn’t sleep and she’s telling me ‘What did you do to us? Stop what you’re doing. Please,'” Kim added. “She was — she feared for my future, for my life. That’s the kind of shock that this governor gave to my family, and his administration should be apologizing to me right away, not spinning and distracting us from getting to the truth.”
Watch the video above, via CNN.
