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Cuomo Will No Longer Face Impeachment, Assembly Leader Says

Carl Heastie, the speaker of the New York State Assembly, said the body would end its investigation of Gov. Andrew Cuomo when his resignation takes effect later this month.

Facing pressure from many of his former political allies, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced his resignation earlier this week. Credit...David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

The leader of the New York State Assembly said Friday that lawmakers will suspend their ongoing impeachment investigation of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, following his resignation earlier this week over sexual harassment allegations.

Carl E. Heastie, the speaker of the Assembly, said the inquiry was moot since its main objective was to determine whether Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, should remain in office. Mr. Heastie, a Bronx Democrat, also said he believed lawmakers did not have the constitutional authority to impeach a governor who was no longer in power.

Mr. Cuomo, whose resignation will take effect later this month, said Tuesday he would step down after a report from the New York State attorney general that found that he had sexually harassed 11 women. The Assembly had been investigating some of the same allegations, among others, and began to move quickly toward impeachment once the report was released.

The suspension of the investigation marks one less concern for Mr. Cuomo, who could have found himself in the middle of a costly impeachment trial. Mr. Cuomo is still facing inquiries from local, state and federal investigators.

Even so, Mr. Heastie said that the impeachment investigation, which was being led by the Judiciary Committee, “did uncover credible evidence in relation to allegations” made against Mr. Cuomo.

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Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said the impeachment investigation into the governor was now moot. Credit...Cindy Schultz/Reuters

Mr. Heastie said that evidence was related not only to the sexual harassment claims, but also to Mr. Cuomo’s potential misuse of state resources in putting together a book on leadership, which he wrote during the pandemic last year in a $5.1 million deal. Mr. Heastie also said there was evidence of the “misleading disclosure” of data on nursing home deaths.

“This evidence, we believe, could likely have resulted in articles of impeachment had he not resigned,” Mr. Heastie said in a statement.

In an interview, Mr. Heastie said he had not seen that evidence but had been told by the Judiciary Committee and outside lawyers hired by the Assembly that it was credible. He said it would be turned over to law enforcement agencies to determine “whether something criminal happened or not.”

“That is where those issues belong, with those investigatory agencies,” Mr. Heastie said. “The real role for the Assembly was to consider impeachment. Once the governor is to resign, we can’t fulfill that role.”

He said he did not want to make the material public because the investigation was ending before it had been completed. “They still would have needed more time,” he said, referring to the investigators hired by the Assembly.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn are investigating the Cuomo administration’s attempt to obscure the full death toll of nursing home residents during the pandemic. At least five local prosecutors — in Manhattan, Albany, Westchester, Nassau and Oswego — have opened investigations into the sexual misconduct allegations against Mr. Cuomo. Letitia James, the state attorney general, is also looking at how Mr. Cuomo may have used state resources, including staff and materials, to write his book.

The decision to end the investigation without issuing any public report was swiftly criticized by Republicans and many Democrats, who control the State Legislature.

“At the very least, the committee should have fully completed its investigation, generated a report detailing all aspects of the governor’s misconduct and violations of state law, and made that report public,” said Assemblyman Dan Quart, a Democrat and member of the Judiciary Committee.

Will Barclay, the Republican minority leader in the Assembly, also took aim at the decision. “Mountains of evidence and months of work will now be hidden from the public by this disappointing, tone-deaf decision,” he said.

On Friday, however, Charles Lavine, the chair of Judiciary Committee, said that the committee would still consider issuing a public report with some of the findings after Mr. Cuomo resigns.

Michael Whyland, a spokesman for Mr. Heastie, said, “We have not precluded a report in the future. But what we don’t want is to interfere with any criminal investigations that are being undertaken.”

Mr. Heastie’s announcement came after several days of debate among legislators over whether to pursue impeachment.

Even after Mr. Cuomo’s resignation, Republicans and some Democratic lawmakers, especially those from the party’s vocal left wing, had been pushing to hold an impeachment vote, saying they wanted to hold Mr. Cuomo accountable. Some of the women who had accused Mr. Cuomo, including Lindsey Boylan and Charlotte Bennett, had also voiced their support for impeachment in recent days.

If Mr. Cuomo had been impeached in the Assembly and then convicted in a Senate trial, lawmakers would have had the option of barring him from ever running for state office again.

But it remained unclear under the State Constitution, which provides very little guidance on impeachment, whether the legislature could impeach an official who had already left office. Lawmakers could have rushed to impeach Mr. Cuomo before his resignation took effect, but the trial would have still taken place after he left office, raising constitutional concerns.

There is no precedent in New York for impeaching a former governor; the only governor to be impeached was Gov. William Sulzer, in 1913, who was removed from office but not prohibited from running again.

Many Democrats had argued against moving to oust Mr. Cuomo, saying that the proceedings would have been a costly distraction for the party, especially during the first few months of Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s time in office.

The Assembly’s broad impeachment investigation was being conducted by an outside law firm, Davis Polk & Wardwell.

Luis Ferré-Sadurní covers New York State politics in Albany. He joined The Times in 2017 and previously wrote about housing for the Metro desk. He is originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico. More about Luis Ferré-Sadurní

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: Cuomo Will No Longer Face Impeachment, Assembly Leader Says. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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