The country’s largest LGBTQ rights advocacy group is in turmoil, facing a staff revolt over their president’s connection to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s sexual harassment scandal.
In a tense all-staff meeting Wednesday, employees at the Human Rights Campaign laid into Alphonso David for nearly an hour and a half ― and asked him to resign several times. A person on the call shared a recording with HuffPost.
David was part of Cuomo’s tight inner circle, serving as his counsel from 2015 to 2019.
The New York attorney general’s office on Tuesday released a bombshell report detailing its investigation into allegations against the Democratic governor, and David appears to have played a significant role in Cuomo’s efforts to discredit his accusers. The report — which is based on conversations with 179 people and more than 74,000 pieces of evidence, including emails, texts, photos and audio files — concluded that Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women and violated federal and state laws.
David publicly called for Cuomo’s resignation in a tweet on Tuesday night. And during the conference call on Wednesday, David told staff that he hadn’t known about the sexual harassment allegations against Cuomo until the report came out.
