it's brand new hour. it's good to be with you. i'm victor blackwell. u.s. is reaching major milestone today. half of the u.s. population is vaccinated against the coronavirus. the average u.s. daily case count is above 98,000. covid wards are getting close to capacity. the delta variant is continuing to surge across this country. predominantly preying on the unva unvaccinated. republican governors are low vaccination rates are urging people to get the shot before

it's too late. >> there's more and more concern about getting yourself vak si f -- vak si city nated and we're returning out of time. >> we live in state with two group of people. those who are vaccinated and those who are not. two groups of people. those vaccinated, who are safe and sadly those who are not vaccinated, who are not safe. >> in florida the national epicenter the crisis is deepening. it counts for one fifth of all cases in the u.s. the state also leads the flags in number of adults and children hospitalized. look at that chart. yet republican governor is adamant he will not allow any local mask or vaccine mandates. cnn is in miami. where do things stand now? >> reporter: victor, i just talked to the florida hospital

association and they were stressing to me how concerned they are about critical staffing shortages given the surges that we have seen in hospitalizations, in case numbers, new case numbers. there's a lot of concern. not just with the hospital but also at the schools where next week a lot of them will start with the first day of school. this is just happened today. the board of education here has passed a new rule. this falls under governor desan tis order that says if a parent feels that their child is in any way experiencing some sort of covid-19 discrimination or some sort of harassment that they can use a voucher to take their student out of the school. this is the latest coming from the governor who has been in a bit of a feud with president joe biden who told him if you're not going to help, get out the way.

that didn't sit well with the governor. they had an exchange of words. the last thing president biden said when he was asked about what the governor is doing, he said, governor who? now desantis is saying this. >> i guess i'm not surprised that biden doesn't remember me. i guess the question is, what else has he forgotten. biden has forgotten about the crisis at our southern border. >> not only is not abiding by public health decisions, he's fund raising off of this. >> reporter: so, the concern for many here is that a health crisis is now turning into a political crisis in state that is seeing hospitalizations and case number surge. they are opening more testing sites here in miami dade county. the county is requiring testing of its employees if they are not

vaccinated and even the hospital, jackson health system just imposed a vaccine mandate for its health care workers. on a local level, folks take an additional measures but between state and federal government, you're seeing quite a bit of exchanges president biden and the governor. >> thanks so much. senator, thanks for being with me. i want to talk about this new rule. i caught my attention. i want to read it for you. a new term coming out of the florida department of education called covid-19 harassment. here is the definition. any threatening, discriminatory or verbal written or physical contact that an individual student suffers in relation to or as a result of school district protocols for covid-19. they go onto define this as

masking requirements, separation or isolation of students, testing requirements that have the effect of substantially interfering with students educational performance opportunities or benefits. your reaction to this new rule and the definition of now covid-19 harassment in florida. >> to be clear, in 2018 when we voted on the schools of hope, republicans made it clear that the schools of hope was to be used as a voucher if children were billion abused. now they have expanded that to score political talking points. texas and florida are one-third of the total quota cases. this total just one week in florida are higher than any other point of be pandemic. the governor has utilized the depth of health and education to score political points on the backs of public health crisis

that we're in right now. >> this threat from the governor on not just the individual schools but the districts that mandate these mask requirements that he would pull funding from them. broward county is rethinking theirs under this new executive order from the governor. what role does the legislature have in withholding that money? can you stop it if you tried? >> it's unconstitutional and it's unlawful on its merits. that's why even the democrats although we're in the minority, when politicians can do it, people do it. that's why i'm happy that the people on the ground, parents, are now suing state of florida for our negligence and what the legislature is doing currently right now. the governor he's a harvard law school graduate. he knew on the surface that his executive order that he put forth last week was not going to fly. that's why he went the other way to go through the board to be

able to do this unprecedented action in calling this emergency meeting when school starts next week. when they should be doing emergency things to make sure students are safe, they're doing the total opposite. they did the total opposite today. >> we don't talk enough about teachers and what this means for them in the classroom trying to keep their students safe but also following the district guidance and what we're seeing from the state. if i have this right, you're a former teacher? >> i am. i'm a former ap chemistry teacher. to be clear, to be in a classroom with 25 to 28 student s a petri dish of bacteria and germs inside a classroom. for the governor and my republican colleagues to go down this road is nothing but a political talking point they're doing that is doing nothing but putting the safety of our teachers and our students at risk. again, when school starts next

week. >> all right. florida state senator, thank you for your time. >> thank you for having me. let's turn to texas now. it's reporting the second most cases behind florida in the past week and in a sign of how dire the situation is there, i want to show you these pictures. an 11-month-old girl from the houston area needed to be air lifted to another hospital 150 miles away because there was no bed space for her. one of the officials at the hospital says they were disheartened by the transfer but not surprised. >> the level of sick visits that we have seen this summer, i've never seen in 20 years of practice here in houston. it's typical that two weeks after the start of school we see a surge of strep and other sources of infection. we are bracing ourselves because this year, it will -- it's not a question of whether it will, it

will be bad. >> texas cases surge. officials are issuing updated guidance for public schools. some of which ron countered the cdc recommendations. the texas education agency says if a student is determined to have close contact, the school is not required to notify the parents of the exposed student. the guidance says the schools are not required to conduct contact tracing. cdc recommend close contacts should get a covid test and regardless of the results should quarantine for 14 days. the agency recommends that schools should notify teaches, staff and families who were close contact as soon as possible. let's turn now to doctor dean of clollege of public health. thank you for being here. i want to start with ha they decided in texas.

we don't talk enough about contact tracing as a mitigation strategy against this virus. what do they lose by not requiring that once they identified a positive case? >> they are tossing public health measures completely out the window. to be honest, we have made children and schools a political battleground. let's replace covid with measles and say if you get exposed, don't worry about contact tracing, isolation, don't worry about vak si flags. we should think it's crazy. we should think the exact same thing for covid. >> we heard from that medical professional in texas after we showed the pictures of that 11 mo -month-old girl who had to be transferred to another hospital. the fatigue of our front line workers as we watch in states that have enacted these bans on

vaccine mandates the, what should the concern be? what's the impact of that fatigue? >> so, couple of slices to that. it breaks my heart as a pediatrician to see this happening. last week i think we had 72,000 kids who were infected here and that's about 20% of of all our cases are kids. it's going up about 20% a week. because the adults are being responsibility, we're putting there burden of this disease on kids. we really need to think about how we get adults vakccinated ad protect our children. >> we learned from the cdc director is that covid-19 vaccines no longer prevent transmission. they are fantastic at preventing severe illness and death but not transmission. how does a vaccinated person apply that to their life. what should we change now with

that? >> prevents transmission if you get infected. let's be very clear. there's a small proportion of people who get vaccinated who then develop these breakthrough infections and yes with the delta variant, if you develop a breakthrough infection, you can transmit to others. vaccines are our solution to this problem. we have a small handful of people who are vaccinated and not problematic. this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. it's all about masks. masks for our kids in school and masks for all indoor spaces. >> let's talk about outdoor spaces. we know the reporting. omar is following this out of milwaukee after the huge crowds we saw outside the milwaukee bucks game when they won the nba championship that 500 cases have been tracked back to this. we don't flow the vaccine status of them, inside, outside.

should people be wearing masks, vaccinated people outdoors in crowded spaces as well? >> in severely crowded spaces with individuals you don't know if they are vaccinated or not, in general outdoor spaces are safe. i think you need to remember the bucks game. there's lots of other examples. people then go to bars. they go to hotel, restaurants, et cetera. there's this sort of mixed indoor expose your. lots of air and wind and sky around you, probably really safe. >> all right. good to hear. thank you. >> you're welcome. remember, mask on again. >> all right. we remember it. thank you. that's a big mask. >> thank you very much. governor andrew cuomo legal team set to speak in a few minutes after one of the women accusing him of harassment files a criminal complaint and chuck

schumer accuses the gop of trying to slow down the passage of the infrastructure bill. this is coming ahead of a key vote set for tomorrow. we are live on the hill.

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infrastructure is getting closer to passage. tomorrow senators will meet for a key procedural vote. they couldn't reach a deal last night on quick passage of the bill. cnn manu is on capitol hill. what has to happen tomorrow for this bill to move forward? >> the next big hurdle is one to shut down debate in the senate. that would require 60 senator to vote in the affirmative to advance this bill. that means 50 democrats are all expected to join ranks to go ahead and ten republican senators. there were 17 republican senators who initially voted to take up the bill. there's a wide expectation that right now they will get those 60 votes tomorrow. afterwards, there's time. about 60 hours of debate all together that would have to occur before they could move the final passage. they could agree to move up the final passage time some time tomorrow. that requires an agreement of all 100 senators and there's something one amendments to be offered to bill. they need to still negotiate some of the finer details.

ultimately this bill will pass the senate. then it goes onto the house. questions still whether they can get that to the house as democrat leaders are trying to tie it to larger $3.5 trillion larger plan that democrats only will support and still uncertain whether that can get through both chambers. >> we'll see if they can move both of those through. let me ask you about the republican senate candidates that we're hearing who are criticizing this bill to align themselves with former president trump. tell us about that. >> reporter: increasingly you're seeing all around in key primaries across the country these republican senate candidates running for open seats are opposed to this bill aligning themselves with trump who said all republicans should block this bill. he didn't give much of a rational. a lot of republican candidates are falling in trump's camp. that's much different than what is happening on capitol hill where there are a number of republican senators, including ones running for re-election

includie ing todd young, lisa murkowski could vote to support it in the case of murkowski and todd young is showing the split between republicans on the hill and the candidates. they don't want to give an inch to the right who they believe if they were to break with donald trump, became 2020 show a sign of where the party was at. >> the next steps on that legislation in the senate. what do you know? >> reporter: there's talk among democrats trying to unify behind one proposal to try to combat efforts on the state level to clamp down on voting access all around the country. there's a problem. there are not going to be 60 votes needed to overcome a republican led filibuster in the

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this weekend hundreds of thousands of bikers will be in south dakota for the annual sturgess motorcycle rally. they are giving them receive test kits. last year's rally which attracted 460,000 people was no question a super spreader event. cnn adrian broadus is in

sturgess the tell us about the rally. >> reporter: there are mitigation factors in place. you'll see hand sanitizing stations and the city has partnered with the state health department to offer covid tests for free for anyone who requests them. we do know this year more people are expected to show up. the pandemic and the ride of the delta variant isn't fluff to keep people away. 780,000 people will flood the town. population of about 7,000. we spoke with the local doctor and this is what he said about how those tests will work. >> these are rapid antigen test kits. you take the swab out of the kit. take a sample from your nose. put it back in the kit. if you're having symptoms and it's a positive test, clearly you're positive.

if you're having simymptoms an it's negative, you need to get tested because sometimes the tests can fail. >> reporter: the city is offering masks to anyone who wants to wear one. you'll note not many people are wearing masks here. >> what do we know from the governor? is she saying anything about this? >> reporter: she will be here on monday. she's expected to participate in a charity ride. she published a tweet welcoming the riders. she specifically said in part, that riders know about the risk more than anyone. victor. >> thank you. any minute now, new york governor andrew cuomo legal team is expected to speak after up with of his accusers filed a criminal complaint detailing sexual misconduct allegations against him. we know that pressure is growing for the governor to resign.

70% of registered new york voters want the governor to step down. cnn erica hill is following all of this. let's start with the filings and the press conference. what do we know? >> the filing, this is the first criminal complaint against the governor that's been filed. this is filed d by an annoonym accuser. we have heard we're waiting on the attorneys for the governor. they are set to hold a press conference at 3:30. we'll see what we hear from them. executive assistant number one, just to remind you. in the report from attorney general, there's an allegation that in november of 2020, she was in a room with the governor. she allegations he put her hand up her blouse. he's denied this. he says it nef happened.

he says in his position statement, which was in response to the attorney general's report on tuesday, he said this never could have happened for a number of reasons. one being the timeline, his time line and the records for the executive mansion are different from hers. she was there for a long time. based on kpcommunications betwe her and other people in the office, it's clear she seemed comfortable with the governor. it was a completely different interaction. he didn't touch her breasts. he said they had a conversation where she came to him over concerns about her marriage and then how that could affect her hours going forward, what this could do with her job. >> stay with me. i want to bring in cnn legal analyst. >> it's a game changer. before we were talking about civil actions that the women

identified, the 11 women identified in the attorney general's report, obviously had an opportunity to file civil complaints for civil harassment and given the evidence outlines in that attorney general's report, many of them have what could be considered very credible claims. now we're talking about criminal liability and what erica just talked about, touching someone's breast and touching her without her consent is a criminal matter. now the governor is not just facing civil claim, potential impeachment by the state legislature but potential criminal charges to be filed against him. very serious allegations made by this executive assistant number one. not clear that this is the only victim that's been identified in that ag's report that may come forward and file a criminal complaint. >> we know the investigative materials have been requested by the da's in erie, westchester,

manhattan counties as well . >> what do you make of it? >> they're efforts to get ahead of the story to try to change the narrative. the headlines have painted a picture of a toxic work force, toxic office and with tgovernor at top of that environment and engaging in illegal conduct. i suspect the lawyers will try to flip this narrative. we know this governor has denied the allegations. he's denied touching anyone. he's defniied engaging in the outlines in the report. i suspect his lawyers will go further in confirming the denials. one thing that is important with respect to this victim, one that is already filed the criminal

complaint, the ag's report talks about her being incredibly credible witness both on the details, on the substance, on her demeanor. they also talk about corroborating information and evidence that will back up the allegations made by this particular victim. the governor has a really high burden to meet. i think in convincing the residents of new york but particularly those criminal prosecutors who are going to be looking to see did he engage in any criminal activity. >> the governor specifically spoke about this accusation in that prerecorded statement that we all watched after the ag read the findings of the report. let's listen to what the governor said. >> there's another complaint i want to address from a woman in my office who said i groped her in my home office. let me be clear, that never happens. she wants anonymity and i

respect that. i am limited by what i can say. her lawyer suggested she will file a legal claim for damages. that will be decided in a court of law. trial by newspaper or biassed reviews are not the way to find the facts in this matter. i welcome the opportunity for a full and fair review before a judge and a jury because this just did not happen. >> one of the elements that's interesting here is that a senior adviser to the governor said in a statement that the office proactively notified the police almost four months ago. >> a little background on that in terms of where that came from. this woman said in this report and as we heard in the press conference on tuesday, she planned to take this to the grave to her. she didn't want to say anything. the reason there ultimately was

a report filed by the governor's office was because in march, she read charlotte bennett's account of what happened to her and she saw the governor's press conference in is all according to the report. she saw the press conference on march 3rd where he said he never touched anyone appropriately. she became very emotional. two of her co-workers saw that and she confided in them. this happened in the workplace they report what she shared with them. they did so. they reported what executive assistant number one told them about what happened. his hand went up under her blouse, cupped her breast over her bra. after that was reported, beth g garvey filed a report on march 11th with the albany police department because this was and i'm going to my notes to make sure i have it 100% here. the reason she filed a report on behalf of executive assistant number one was because there was

the state policy it had to be reported. in the complaint did not file the report, she had to file it so say these allegations were brought to me. she said the woman obtained an attorney. she spoke with the attorney and at that time counsel confirmed the client did not want to make a report so the state then notified the police department and gave them the attorney's information. that's where the notification came from back in march four months ago. >> they did it because it was policy. >> it's state policy. >> let's talk about it politically in the minute we have left here. we have seen the poll, seven out of ten registered new york voters want him out. every democrat in the president on through the new york congressional delegation, the neighboring state, governors want him out. any cracks politically for the governor? >> any cracks in terms of will he resign? >> no far today it did not appear to be that way. we were talking about what this press conference is going to be about.

earlier this week the chair of the new york state democratic party was on with our colleague don lemon and asked about the conversations he had with the governor trying to encourage him to resign. he didn't talk about resignation but the dpgovernor was focused defending himself and being able t to tell his side of the story. he's not considering resignation. he wants his attorneys out there today on his behalf. >> we'll see what the head lieps are out of this call from these three attorneys. the we see that the three attorneys are here now. are we taking this, guys? let's listen.

all right. i hear people speaking. we'll get the audio right. i mentioned that you've got these other das that are requested the investigative materials. what do those surveys of the materials, those investigations -- we've got audio. i'll come to you after that. >> we represent the executive chamber of the state of new york and miss glavin represented the governor of new york in connection with the attorney general's investigation of the allegations of sexual harassment and we're here today to talk a little bit about that investigation. let me start first by explaining the idea of us representing the executive chamber of state of

new york. those of you who cover albany and the governor's office know that's a fancy old fashioned way saying the office of the governor. we don't represent the governor personally. in march, as you all know, the governor referred to the attorney general of new york a request that she select an independent law firm to in investigate allegations of sexual harassment. about a week or ten days later, we were engaged to represent the executive chamber and our role is pretty simple to understand, i think. our first goal and our first purpose was to make sure the investigators got all of the information and all the documents whether they were hard copy, electronic that they are entitled to. that involved a pretty massive production over the course of the next three or four months. an enormous number of hard copy documents. the second part of our task was

to represent chamber employees who wanted us to accompany them to the interviews that were requested by the investigators. the third was to make sure that the chamber and its employees were treated fairly. it's the last of those things that i want to address briefly. as you know, the special deputies on behalf of the attorney general issued 165-page report on tuesday at 11:00. this is not like an ordinary civil or criminal proceeding. there report will not be followed by a civil hearing or a criminal or trial to determine the accuracy of their conclusions, hold up they got there or to weigh the evidence. for the people in the chairman, this was the end of the line. this was what the attorney general and the investigators meant to have as effectively the

first and last word. we asked the attorney general's office to provide the people whose conduct would be discussed, the contact evaluated and you know the contact that would be criticized. we asked to provide draft copies of those reports to the people whose conduct was implicated by the findings. we asked them to do that because we had concerns as people would in any circumstance like this, there might be things inaccurate, not sufficiently thorough. there were things that might be included or excluded from the report that might be fair or unfair. we wanted to make sure that the people who were going to be discussed had an opportunity to respond before the report was made public. in the end, the attorney general's office refused that request. every one in the chamber from the secretaries to the governor who were discussed in that report got that report at exactly the same time as those of you in the press did and as you the members of the public

did. that was problematic because their opportunity to challenge, to rebut, to raise questions did not occur until after the report was public and in today's media world where it's 24/7, all of those allegations were out and being reported while people were flipping over the pages. our request was not an unusual one. it's a common place occurrence in these kinds of investigations. it's state of the art for investigators to provide that sort of information ahead of time to be people who are being investigated. the department of justice, the office of finspector general. most of all inspectors do it. they do it because they want to make sure they are being fair to the people who are being investigated but they do it for themselves and for the public to make sure the report is accurate. that did not happen. as a result, it's now taken some

time and we'll hear about things that relate to the governor. it's taken some time for people to sort through the report and to see what they might think is actually not correct. i'll give you one example which got some press yesterday or the days before. it's the one in which the special investigator take issue in particular with the activities of the chamber as a whole by the group of senior employees as a whole. as the report makes clear, the governor's office, the chamber did two things. released records related to the circumstances of the departure from the chamber and to consider and decide not to publish either

an op-ed or letter about the governor. the reason that's important is we had a strong sense from the questioning of various respects and we represent some 20-odd employees ourselves. we had a sense of the kinds of document requests that they were making that they were investigating whether that conduct was effectively illegal retaliation. we wrote a 13-page letter, almost a brief to the attorney general's office explaining why that conduct did not meet the legal definition of retaliation. i understand the attorney general's office reached a different conclusion and they are free to do that. that's what happens. what disturbed us about the report is that that letter got -- a, mischaracterized and

then b given the back of its hand. why is that important? it's not our egos. our egos are not bruised by that. what matters is there's a serious legal issue about whether the attorney general's office is correct or not. that serious legal issue should have gotten more consideration in a report that reaches a conclusion about illegality. that's one example. there will be others that relate to the governor, personally that will be discussed. the second thing i want to talk about in terms of fairness is in terms of the transcript. many witnesses testified. many were chamber employees. many were interviewed without court reporters. in were interviewed with court reporters. it's now 76 hour since the attorney general's press conference. not one of those witnesses and their lawyers has a copy of the transcript as we understand it of their own client's interview. nobody. this t assembly seems to be

getting them. the district attorneys seem to be getting them. the witnesses who still want to look and see whether their testimony was record ed accurately, whether the question was right or wrong and the public who might want to see how the questions were phrased, what the evidence is does not have a copy to see that. that's a problem for the people whose conduct was being questioned. it's also particular problem for the governor and the chamber as we respond to that report. as you can imagine, as lawyers, what we like to do, what we need to do, what we're entitled to do on behalf of our clients is to see the evidence so we can properly respond to it. right now, we can't. my one ask, it's too late to fix getting the report before it comes out, it's not too late to get the transcripts. whether it's the attorney general's office or the assembly who has the power to release those to the lawyers and the witnesses who testified and to

miss glavin so she can repair her response, that's the last thing we need to think about. whether it's time for those transcripts to be turned over so the lawyers representing their clients can finally respond on behalf of their clients as you the press, you the public and people want to hear. now, miss glavin, i turn it over to you. ms. glavin, i believe you're on mute. >> sorry about that. good afternoon, everybody. my name is rita glavin, and i represent governor cuomo. i'm a former federal prosecutor. and i know the difference between putting together a case against a target versus doing

independent fact-finding with an open mind. there has been no open-minded fact-finding here. in this investigation. this investigation was conducted in a manner to support a predetermined narrative. am i frozen?

>> all right. so, some technical issues from the governor's legal team here. we'll get you to them as soon as they figure that out. erica hill, what we've heard from paul fishman thus far, this case of there not being basic fairness, a lot of this we didn't get a transcript, they have not released some of these details. we've got paula reid here as well. my apology for not introducing paula reid. your first take on what we've heard. >> luckily, too, paula reid's a recovering attorney so we get to tap into that legal mind. is this going to be compelling, right, to the average new yorker that they didn't get the kind of discovery that they wanted, that this wasn't the process that these defense attorneys had hoped it would be? i mean, this is an unusual way to use the national spotlight to defend their client. they're basically making process arguments. these are procedural arguments, but no one so far in this press availability, they're clearly having technical issues, they

haven't gone through their whole plan. but no one's addressed the elephant in the room, that there is now the first complaint against the governor. the fact that this wasn't just a he said/she said. these are 11 women found credible by the state attorney general. so kicking off a press conference to say we didn't get the transcript ahead of time or a copy of the report. i don't know the specific procedure in new york, but it's not really going to change the equation for the governor given the weight of the evidence on the other side in the court of public opinion. >> erica? >> i have to say i'm certainly not a lawyer. >> neither am i. but watching it, that was one of the things that stood out to me. and we have heard these things from paul fishman. he talked about that they had put out these 13 pages. he was talking about 13 pages in response to the claims of retaliation against lindsey boylan and what may or may not have been done by the executive chamber. we know that that's a concern from them based on statements that we've had over the last three days or so. but it is fascinating that

that's what we started with. it wasn't here are all the things that were wrong. it was -- >> we didn't get a draft of the report. >> yes. i don't know, i mean, he said, look, this is different, as you pointed out, paula, this is a, i guess, different kind of investigation in terms of what they were tasked with. and he even said this is the end of the line. we knew that this was not going to produce criminal charges. the attorney general was very clear on that. she was asked more than once at the press conference what about criminal charges. >> not my job. >> and he said this is not what we're here for. >> from a legal perspective, the strategy of how they've started this off and then i want you to get to the point that paul fishman was trying to make here was that we wanted a draft copy of the report so that we could offer rebuttal, and it's not unusual to try to get that. tackle those two. >> yeah, victor.

this is an age-old strategy of lawyers when you have nothing, throw everything up against the wall and see what will stick. and so paul fishman comes out and he makes this long kind of rambling argument about what other agencies have done in similar situations and how this investigative team didn't follow what these other agencies had done. and we don't even know at this point if they didn't get the information. but what was missing is a denial of these very serious allegations. making convoluted arguments about whether there was retaliation against ms. boylan and whether some 13-page response of the retaliation was included in this report. but he didn't come out and say these allegations are categorically false. that's what anyone who wants to give this governor any benefit of the doubt wants to hear. and we didn't hear that. so, until we hear that, i think

the allegations of the women have to be believed. ms. james said these investigators interviewed these women, they had their opportunity to assess their demeanor and credibility and it was credible. >> i think we fixed rita glavin's issue. >> my name's rita glavin, and i represent governor cuomo. i'm a former federal prosecutor, and i know the difference between putting case together against a target versus doing independent fact-finding with an open mind. and there has been no open-minded fact-finding in this case. the investigation was conducted to support a predetermined narrative. and our legal system, both sides are heard and given access to the evidence. but here instead of acting as

independent fact-finders, the investigators acted as prosecutors, judge, and jury. on tuesday the attorney general and the investigators called a press conference. and within minutes of that very carefully choreographed press conference, there were calls for the governor to step down. we weren't given, as mr. fishman told you, any advanced notice about when the report would be released, its findings, a chance to respond to errors, any inaccuracies. and that was intentional. this was not an exercise in truth-finding. let me tell you that on just our

review of the report, and, again, as mr. fishman informed you, we do not have the underlying evidence. that has not been provided to us from that report. we have not had a chance to examine the transcripts or even memos of interview of the 179 people that the attorney general interviewed. but what i do know based on the limited information we've been given access to, there are contrary facts and omissions from that report. and you have to ask yourselves why. i'm going to give you three examples. the first relates to executive assistant number one, which she has alleged is perhaps the most significant allegation made against the governor. she has said that during the

work day the governor groped her breast in his office. in essence, she has accused governor cuomo of sexual assault. the governor has repeatedly denied that ever took place. and, quite frankly, when she first raised this in early march, he was stunned. this executive assistant gave an anonymous interview to the albany times union. it was published on april 7 of 2021. and i encourage you, please, read what she told the times union about that day. she told them that she was asked to come to the mansion to fix a

technical issue with the governor's iphone or with his phone. and the report states as fact that she was summoned to the mansion. what she tells the times union is that she arrived, she walked into the governor's second-floor office where he slammed the door, groped her breast under her shirt and over her bra, and then she left without saying a word because she was so upset. the governor was interviewed on july 17th. and during that interview he was told for the first time when this alleged incident took place. november 16 of 2020. and after that interview, i did, as the governor's lawyer, what i would have expected that the

investigators had already done. i did what any investigator would do, which is i reconstructed the events -- >> the governor's legal team is continuing to take on the accusations made in the a.g.'s report. more coverage continues on "the lead." >> documentary evidence does not support what she said. and what is disturbing to me is that the two investigators did not show that evidence to you. they ignored it. ask them why. let's go through the time line of november 16. in her account the albany times union, she says she was summoned