Sandra Lee: “Oh My God!” – What Did Cuomo Do?

Edited by: TJVNews.com

Celebrity chef, Food Channel regular and former gal pal to New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, Sandra Lee reacted to the harassment accusations against her ex-paramour by former female aides with the shocked words: “Oh my God.”

The Post reported that Lee, 54, made the remark but declined to comment further when asked last week in the aftermath of accusations by these aides and other young women against Cuomo for harassment.

According to a report on the cheatsheet.com web site,  Sandra Lee and Andrew Cuomo ended their decade long relationship in September 2019, just a few months before Cuomo was thrust into the national spotlight. As governor of New York State, Cuomo was tasked with steering the state through the Coronavirus crisis, and people across the world watched his daily news conferences. He even had the time to pen a book about his experiences navigating the coronavirus as a leader and even won a daytime Emmy award for his daily presentations to the voting public.

Cuomo and Lee started their relationship in 2005, according to the cheastsheet.com web site, shortly after Cuomo’s divorce from Kerry Kennedy was finalized. Betrothed to the seventh child of Robert Kennedy, Jr and his wife Ethel, Cuomo was married to Kennedy for 15 years and they share three daughters together.  According to a report in the New York Times, Cuomo and Lee first met at a cocktail party in the Hamptons. They were introduced by a mutual friend, and Lee was, reportedly, taken with Cuomo immediately.  Their relationship began shortly after that, but it took more than a year for Lee to meet Cuomo’s three daughters.

Lindsey Boylan, who worked for the state’s economic development agency, was the first female aide to pipe up about the sexual harassment she sustained in 2018 because of Cuomo’s totally inappropriate behavior towards her.  In a lengthy essay that she penned last week, Boylan directly accused the governor of sexual harassment and in so doing she outlined several unsettling episodes, including an unsolicited kiss in his Manhattan office, according to a New York Times report.

“As I got up to leave and walk toward an open door, he stepped in front of me and kissed me on the lips,” Boylan wrote. “I was in shock, but I kept walking.” Cuomo and Boylan met one-on-one at least four times in 2018, according to the governor’s public schedule database. Three of those meetings took place in the State Capitol; one, on the afternoon of July 19, happened in Cuomo’s office in Midtown, according to the NYT. The question remains: Where was Sandra Lee?

Last weekend, another former female aid to Cuomo, Charlotte Bennett gave an interview to the NYT in which she also accused her boss of sexually harassing her while she served as an executive assistant and health policy adviser in the governor’s administration in 2020,  according to a report in People Magazine.

Bennett, 25, sat down with CBS’ anchor Norah O’Donnell last week for her first television interview. Based on what Cuomo discussed with her, Bennett surmised that “the governor’s trying to sleep with me” during a one-on-one meeting with Cuomo back in June, as was reported by People magazine.

“Without explicitly saying it, he implied to me that I was old enough for him and he was lonely,” she said. The question remains: Where was Sandra Lee?

For his part, Cuomo says he “never inappropriately touched anybody” but apologized this week for what he insisted was inadvertent behavior. An independent investigation is ongoing.

Last week, it was also reported that Anna Ruch, 33, said the governor touched her face and back and asked to kiss her moments after they met at a 2019 wedding reception, according to a WABC News report.

The New York Times reports that Ruch said Cuomo put his hands on her lower back, and when she removed them, she said he seemed “aggressive” and put his hands on her cheeks and asked if he could kiss her.

“I was so confused and shocked and embarrassed,” Ruch told the Times, which published a photo of the encounter showing the governor’s hands on her face. “I turned my head away and didn’t have words in that moment.” The question remains: Where was Sandra Lee?

Also last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that yet another former aide of Cuomo said he asked her if she had a boyfriend, called her sweetheart, touched her on her lower back at a reception and once kissed her hand when she rose from her desk.

Ana Liss, now 35 years old, served as a policy and operations aide to Cuomo between 2013 and 2015, according to the WSJ report.  She said Cuomo’s actions were unsolicited and occurred in the first year while she sat at her desk, which was near his office in the Executive Chamber of the New York State Capitol in Albany. The question remains: Where was Sandra Lee?

Speculation has arisen as to whether Cuomo was approaching young women for the purpose of sexually exploiting them while he was still in a relationship with Ms. Lee. The question remains as to whether Lee had any knowledge of Cuomo’s twisted actions and if so, did this lead to their break up? If she was not aware of Cuomo’s proclivities towards infidelity, then why did the pair terminate their relationship after being together for over a decade?

These questions and many more remain to be answered in their entirety. Only time will tell.