Cuomo to de Blasio: Apologize for false accusation

After Mayor Bill de Blasio blamed the leak of a recent damaging report on a Cuomo appointee, the state inspector general stated it was a Republican at the Board of Elections who was responsible for the leak, and now Gov. Cuomo is asking that the mayor apologize for his accusation.

The report, which called into question de Blasio’s 2014 fundraising efforts for upstate Democrats, was originally thought by the mayor to have been leaked by Board of Elections Chief Enforcement Counsel Risa Sugarman, but that accusation was refuted on Wednesday by the state inspector general, CBS2 reported.

De Blasio had been hinting for weeks that, because Sugarman was a Cuomo appointee, the governor was ultimately responsible for the leak of the damaging report, according to NY1. Cuomo said the mayor had falsely accused a public servant who had nothing to do with the leak.

“I’m a big boy. He’s a big boy. You want to say something unkind about me, that’s one thing. But not public servants that were just doing their job. With no evidence whatsoever, by the way,” Cuomo was quoted by NY1. “And now we know definitively that he was wrong.”

In response, City Hall said that it was the Board of Elections who should apologize for not having safeguards in place to stop such leaks from happening, CBS2 added.

“The State BOE leaked a confidential memo and has been called out for failing to have proper policies in place to safeguard against these leaks,” de Blasio press secretary Karen Hinton said. “The BOE owes the people of New York an apology for such a flagrantly political act.”

Cuomo called the leak a sideshow meant to distract from the fact that de Blasio’s fundraising was being investigated by the Manhattan DA and U.S. attorney’s office, NY1 added.