It’s a political dynasty as America knows it: the Cuomo family, descended from Italian immigrants, is in turmoil after Andrew, accused of sexual assault, resigns as governor of New York and that her brother Chris, a star CNN reporter, was dismissed for advising his older brother.
The fall has been dizzying since this summer for the two Cuomo brothers.
The younger Chris, a 51-year-old journalist, was sidelined Tuesday evening “indefinitely” by the American news channel CNN.
Based on a months-long investigation by New York State Attorney General Letitia James – herself a candidate for state governor – CNN criticizes Chris Cuomo for advising and ” defended ”his older brother Andrew Cuomo, 64 in December, indicted in October of sexual assault against a former employee.
Sexual assault
Faced with accusations of sexual assault by at least 11 women, Andrew Cuomo, powerful governor of New York State for ten years and who had taken on a national political dimension in 2020 thanks to his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic , had to resign last August.
Prosecutor James released thousands of pages of written transcripts and videos of hearings from many of the protagonists of her investigation against Andrew Cuomo, including Chris Cuomo, on Monday evening.
“Yes, he’s my brother, I love him to death no matter what. I only have one, ”the journalist replied to investigators who questioned him in July about the nature of the advice and assistance given to Andrew Cuomo in the turmoil of accusations of sexual assault.
“If I can help my brother, I will. If he wants me to hear something, I will. If he wants me to weigh on something, I’ll try to do it, ”insisted Chris Cuomo.
It is because these legal documents “reveal a level of implication to help his brother more important than what we were aware of” that CNN decided on Tuesday to dismiss its star presenter, justified a spokesman for the chain.
If I can help my brother, I will. If he wants me to hear something, I will.
To understand the strength of the ties between the two brothers, we must immerse ourselves in the “family saga” of the Cuomo for a century, a shining symbol of Italian immigration to the United States at the beginning of the 20th century.e century, explains to AFP Michael Shnayerson, author of The Contender, a biography of Andrew Cuomo. And go back to the Italian grandfather, Andrea Cuomo, who left the Naples area in the 1920s to run a grocery store with his wife Immacolata in New York’s Queens district.
” To hit “
He spoke “barely English and when asked what motivated him, he replied”puncha puncha!“Which meant don’t stop hitting and never give up,” says Shnayerson.
Their son Mario Cuomo, born in 1932 and educated in New York, rose through the ranks of local politics and the Democratic Party, and was elected three times governor of the state (1983-1994), also leaving his most imprint. large city in United States.
For their biographer, Mario Cuomo was “a man of immense charm, but who was with his sons as hard as his father had been with him”.
Andrew and Chris Cuomo, 13 years apart, grow up in a family atmosphere made of “brutality”, “rivalry” against each other, but also with an “indestructible brotherly bond”, a “loyalty one. to each other and to the rest of the family, ”says Shnayerson.
Andrew Cuomo’s campaign manager for his father in the 1980s, Andrew Cuomo also entered politics in the Democratic Party, then in the government of Bill Clinton in the 1990s. He became Attorney General of the State of New York in the 2000s, before d ‘being its governor from 2011 to last August.
The Cuomo clan also crossed for decades a political dynasty of national scope, sometimes rivaling New York: the Kennedys. One of the daughters of Ethel and Robert Kennedy, senator from New York assassinated in 1968, Kerry Kennedy, married Andrew Cuomo in 1990. They will experience a heated divorce in 2005.
“In this great family saga, Mario remained the patriarch until his death” in 2015, notes Michael Shnayerson. But after their father passed away, “Andrew and Chris may have lacked the moral compass to keep them from drifting,” he concludes.