Who ordered a smear campaign against Cuomo's first accuser?

Within hours of Boylan’s tweet on December 13th, several news outlets reported that they had “obtained” state-government documents relating to Boylan’s job performance in the Cuomo administration. The documents—described by the Associated Press as “personnel memos,” by the Post as “personnel documents,” and by the Times Union as “personnel records”—said that several women had complained to a state-government human-resources office that Boylan had “behaved in a way towards them that was harassing, belittling, and had yelled and been generally unprofessional.” According to the Post’s account, “three black employees went to state human resources officials accusing Boylan, who is white, of being a ‘bully’ who ‘treats them like children.’ ” According to the Associated Press, the documents said that Boylan resigned after being “counseled” about the complaints in a meeting with a top administration lawyer. Reporters who wanted to dig into Boylan’s accusations against Cuomo now had to contend with the possibility that there were people out there who might have accusations to make against Boylan. At best, the documents seemed to raise questions about Boylan’s reliability. At worst, they painted her as a racist…

At a press conference last week, Cuomo said that he supported “a woman’s right to come forward,” and that he was “sorry for whatever pain I caused.” At the same time, he pleaded with New Yorkers to allow him some due process. “Wait for the facts from the attorney general’s report before forming an opinion,” he said. That’s how the Governor would like to be treated. But that’s not how he traditionally has treated others. For decades, the Governor has had a reputation for scorched-earth tactics, and for retaliating against those who corner him, threaten him, or simply displease him. As Boylan weighed whether to come forward last year, her lawyer told me, she “believed that she would be retaliated against for going public with her mistreatment.” One former senior official in the Cuomo administration whom I spoke to said it was impossible to imagine that Cuomo himself hadn’t approved the leak of the Boylan documents. “There’s no question he would know about it, and direct it,” the former official said. “That’s how he would think.”