Cuomo Should ‘Stick to His Guns’: Alan Dershowitz

Demonstrators hold signs as they gather outside the New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office calling for his resignation, in the Manhattan borough of New York on March 2, 2021. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz said on Saturday that since “accusations don’t constitute guilt” in the United States, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo should not prematurely resign in response to the sexual harassment allegations against him.

“Accusations don’t constitute guilt,” Dershowitz told Newsmax host Carl Higbie. “I wrote a book about it called ‘Guilt by Accusation,’ so I think that Gov. Cuomo should stick to his guns. Let there be a full investigation.”

Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz. (Roger Askew/Shutterstock.com)

“And if nothing more comes out, these sexual allegations are not enough to deprive him and deprive the millions of voters who voted for him of his governorship,” Dershowitz added.

“I take the same position whether a person is a Democrat or Republican, whether I voted for him or against him. The law has to be the same. The shoe on the other foot has to fit.”

Dershowitz said of the media reports, “Those are not the kinds of things that should result in impeachment or resignation” because “first of all, the most serious allegation, the only one that alleges possible criminal conduct—groping, which in a legal concept is just a made-up word—but that’s by an anonymous source,” Dershowitz said.

“In America, we don’t make people resign. We don’t even publish anonymous sources. And so we ought to discount, until she’s willing to come forward and be subjected to vetting and find out who she is and what her agenda might be.”

The latest allegation of groping from an anonymous source has been referred to the Albany Police Department, according to the New York Post.

Dershowitz said the other “allegations don’t yet rise to a level of impeachable conduct.”

He noted that the nursing home scandal and reported cover-ups are “quite different.”

Cuomo remains the subject of multiple investigations over nursing home deaths during the pandemic.

Two senators from New York, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, on Friday joined a rapidly growing group of Democratic New York lawmakers calling on Cuomo to resign, after the additional allegations of sexual harassment emerged.

Rep. Jerry Nadler and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also joined the calls on Friday for Cuomo to resign.