The move came a day after New York Attorney General Letitia James released a trove of subpoenaed records that include texts showing the “Cuomo Prime Time” host agreed to contact news industry “sources” for advance information on reports regarding his older brother.
In a prepared statement, CNN said the material “shed new light on Chris Cuomo’s involvement in his brother’s defense.”
“The documents, which we were not privy to before their public release, raise serious questions,” the network said.
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“When Chris admitted to us that he had offered advice to his brother’s staff, he broke our rules and we acknowledged that publicly. But we also appreciated the unique position he was in and understood his need to put family first and job second.”
Text messages and Cuomo’s own testimony to state AG investigators, revealed the CNN star was asked by then-Gov. Cuomo’s top aide Melissa Derosa to find out if more women were coming forward with sexual misconduct charges as the governor’s sex scandal was unfolding.
“I would — when asked, I would reach out to sources, other journalists, to see if they had heard of anybody else coming out,” Chris Cuomo stunningly said, according to the AG’s transcript.
“I remember Melissa asking me at some point that either they wanted to know if I knew or could find out if more were coming or that she had heard that one or maybe two more were coming and could I find out.”
Three days earlier, on March 4, Chris Cuomo also texted DeRosa about Anna Ruch, 33, who’d told the New York Times that then-Gov. Cuomo asked her, “Can I kiss you?” during a wedding reception in 2019.
That article also featured a photo of Cuomo, 63, with his hands holding either side of Ruch’s face as she appeared to grimace in fear.
Source: CNN indefinitely suspends Chris Cuomo over damning AG documents
