Their services included things like helping Cuomo’s team develop a media strategy, interacting with reporters and disseminating documents to potentially undermine the governor’s first public accuser, Lindsay Boylan.
Vlasto and Moran told investigators that as the scandal grew, Cuomo did offer to pay them. Vlasto said he declined. Moran said Kivvitt declined because the firm doesn’t work “on the opposite side of victims.”
“The governor tried to negotiate with me and pay Kivvit
Moran also described the difficulty of saying no to a governor famous for demanding long hours from his staff and bearing grudges against people he felt were disloyal.
“The Cuomo family people, like they feel an obligation to serve him, when I don’t think they should,” said Moran, who managed Cuomo’s 2018 campaign.
“It’s hard to say no to him. Do you worry that you’re tarnishing a decades-long relationship? Sure. Do you worry that he’s going to survive the whole thing and be frustrated at those that helped him and didn’t help him? Sure.”
“If you’re going to say no to him,” Moran said, “you’ve got to look him dead in the eye. You’ve got to not quiver in your voice. If you give him any opening where he can figure out a way to charm you, or move you, or cajole you, or persuade you, he will do it,” Moran said.
Kivitt spokesperson Tom Meara said “it is well documented that the firm declined to work on these issues and the former employees were not acting on behalf of the firm.”
Bamberger and Vlasto declined comment when reached by The Associated Press. Moran didn’t respond to messages left by phone and email. All have since left Kivvit.
Other former aides who helped Cuomo respond to the allegations include Facebook communications manager Dani Lever, who told the attorney general’s investigators she had helped Cuomo on her “personal time.”
Lever and Facebook, which lobbies New York officials, didn’t respond to request for comment.
Ethics experts said it doesn’t matter if employees were acting independently of their companies on personal time. They are still subject to the ban on gifts.
“As a lobbyist, giving your professional services without charge obviously is prohibited, in fact it’s a misdemeanor, it’s a crime,” David Grandeau, New York’s former top ethics regulator, said. “The laws are crystal clear. The problem is with the people enforcing and interpreting those laws.”
New York’s ethics commission has issued
Reinvent Albany Executive Director John Kaehny doesn’t expect action from the ethics body, which numerous Democratic lawmakers and critics hope to overhaul.
“Right now, JCOPE itself is so mired in controversy and its own difficulties and likely to be replaced that we’re not holding our breath,” Kaehny said. “They broke the law and probably nothing will happen.”
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