‘What He Did to Me Was a Crime’: Cuomo Accuser Brittany Commisso Speaks Up

Brittany Commisso, the woman who last week filed a criminal complaint against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for groping her, is going public and pushing back against the governor’s claim that he never touched anyone inappropriately.

“It’s simple. I know the truth,” Commisso told “CBS This Morning” in an interview that aired Monday. “He knows the truth. I know what happened, and so does he.”

Commisso was known only as “Executive Assistant #1” in the report released last week by the New York attorney general’s office, which concluded that Cuomo had sexually harassed 11 women. Commisso’s allegation was one of the more serious ones, as she told investigators that the governor groped her on two occasions. Once, in December 2019, Cuomo “moved his hand to grab her butt cheek and began to rub it” while the two took a selfie together, according to the report. Then, in November 2020, Cuomo allegedly slid his hand up her blouse and grabbed her breast over her bra while the two were in his office at the Executive Mansion.

Commisso, 32, retold her account in the interview. 

“While I was taking the selfie, I became so nervous that my hands were clearly shaking and a lot of the photos that I was snapping were clearly blurry,” she said of the December 2019 incident. When Cuomo saw the photos, he suggested they sit on a couch to take a better photo. “I thought to myself, ‘Okay, I don’t think on the couch that he would have a way to do what he just did.’ So I felt safer, actually, on the couch.”

The following November, she said Cuomo gave her a “sexually aggressive” hug at the Executive Mansion. She told him, “Governor, you’re going to get us in trouble.”

“I thought to myself, ‘That probably wasn’t the best thing to say.’ But at that time, I was so afraid that one of the mansion staff—that they were going to come up and see this and think, ‘Oh, is that what she comes here for?’” Commisso said. “And that’s not what I came there for and that’s not who I am. And I was terrified of that.”

That’s when Cuomo shut the door to his office, came back, and cupped her breast, Commisso said. “I exactly remember looking down, seeing his hand—which is a large hand—thinking to myself, ‘Oh my god, this is happening.’ It happened so quick. He didn’t say anything. When I stopped it, he just pulled away and walked away.”