Chris Cuomo’s former colleague from another network came out with new details about exit from CNN last year and an accusation, claiming that he had sexually assaulted her in his office, which he denies. Attorney Debra S. Katz, who said she was representing an anonymous client who worked with Cuomo at ABC News, shared these new information in a letter.
In 2011, the woman was a temp at ABC, but she was looking for permanent employment, so she accepted an invitation to have lunch with Chris, as he was giving her career advice previously, according to the letter which was addressed to a CNN lawyer. But when she arrived for the meeting with the ABC News anchor at the time, there was actually no food on the table in his office, so instead, he allegedly tried to convince the woman to have sex with him, but she declined, as per the letter. This escalated into him assaulting her and her running away from his office, as stated in a report.
An “abuse of power at CNN to attempt to silence my client,” Katz wrote in the letter, which refers to contact Chris made with her client, referred to as Jane Doe in the letter, during the #MeToo movement, when other high-profile figures like NBC’s Matt Lauer were swept up in allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse.
“After years without any substantive communication from Mr. Cuomo whatsoever, Ms. Doe suspected he was concerned about her coming forward publicly with her allegations and wanted to use the proposed segment as an opportunity to ‘test the waters’ and discourage her from going on the record about his sexual misconduct,” Katz wrote in the letter, as per a report.
However, one other source that is familiar with what transpired, says the company where the woman was working had been the subject of sustained news coverage and it would have made sense for a journalist to reach out. This source also says that, prior to Chris being fired, the letter and the woman’s claims were not investigated.
Photo: fw_gadget, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons