Schneiderman resigned on Monday hours after The New Yorker published a bombshell story where four women allege that the state’s top lawyer physically abused them often after consuming large amounts of alcohol.
“Weiner is gone, Spitzer is gone - next will be lightweight A.G. Eric Schneiderman,” Trump wrote on September 11, 2013. “Is he a crook? Wait and see, worse than Spitzer or Weiner.”
Eliot Spitzer was New York’s attorney general in 2008 when a report surfaced that he arranged a tryst with a prostitute.
Anthony Weiner represented New York in the U.S. House of Representatives for more than a decade before he was caught sending a lewd photo to a woman on Twitter. He resigned shortly after and has since been sentenced to prison over a separate incident where he sent an obscene photo to a 15-year-old girl.
Governor Andrew Cuomo had called for Schneiderman’s resignation within hours of the New Yorker article’s publication, and only slightly more than an hour later, Schneiderman, a Democrat who was running for re-election, said he was stepping down.
“In the last several hours, serious allegations, which I strongly contest, have been made against me,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “While these allegations are unrelated to my professional conduct or the operations of the office, they will effectively prevent me from leading the office’s work at this critical time. I therefore resign my office, effective at the close of business on May 8, 2018.”
Cuomo, in his statement calling for Schneiderman’s resignation, referred to “the damning pattern of facts and corroboration laid out in the article,” and said he did not believe it was possible for Schneiderman to continue to serve as attorney general.
The New Yorker reported that two of the women who spoke to the magazine “alleged that he repeatedly hit them, often after drinking, frequently in bed and never with their consent.” The two women who were named in the article both called the abuse by Schneiderman “assault,” the magazine reported.
“In the privacy of intimate relationships, I have engaged in role-playing and other consensual sexual activity,” Schneiderman said in a statement issued by Stu Loeser & Co. before he announced his resignation. “I have not assaulted anyone. I have never engaged in non-consensual sex, which is a line I would not cross.”
A spokesman for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said the office is opening an investigation.
New York state’s constitution calls for the legislature to fill a vacancy in the office of the attorney general. But with the office up for election in November, any candidate chosen would serve only for a matter of months.
The primary election is scheduled for September, followed by the November general election.
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