New York Assemblyman Ron Kim, a Democrat, said lethally incompetent Gov. Andrew Cuomo threatened to destroy his career if Kim did not vigorously defend officials involved in the ongoing nursing home scandal rocking Cuomo’s administration.
The New York Post quoted Kim in its story exposing the administration’s coverup of the magnitude of coronavirus-related fatalities in nursing homes. The article centered on an admission by Cuomo’s secretary Melissa DeRosa that the administration feared a federal investigation.
Kim, who publicly accused Cuomo of lying about the coverup, told CNN that the bullying governor called him directly and threatened his career “if I did not cover up for Melissa and what she said. ”
“He tried to pressure me to issue a statement, and it was a very traumatizing experience,” Kim said. “And he said I hadn’t seen his wrath and that he can destroy me,” adding that “no man has ever spoken” to him that way in his “entire life.”
“At some point he tried to humiliate me, asking: ‘Are you a lawyer? I didn’t think so. You’re not a lawyer.’ It almost felt like in retrospect he was trying to bait me and anger me and say something inappropriate. I’m glad I didn’t,” he added
A Cuomo senior adviser predictably told CNN that “Kim’s assertion that the governor said he would ‘destroy him’ is false.”