ABC News chief legal analyst Dan Abrams told the panel at “Good Morning America” on Friday that the charging of former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo by the Albany County Sheriff’s Office was an “unusual maneuver” that was “effectively going around the district attorney.”
Abrams said, “This is a very unusual maneuver that the sheriff did here. The sheriff is effectively going around the district attorney and went directly to the court. I spoke to a number of assistant district attorneys who have worked in this office before. A couple of them didn’t even know that the Sheriff could do this. The fact that the D.A. did not know that this was coming tells you that this is the Sheriff trying to put pressure on the D.A. to actually file charges. But it does create a bit of a mess for them because now the defense, Cuomo’s attorney, has a very good legal argument to make to say that this charge should be dismissed altogether.”
He continued, “Even if you believe every detail of the accusation and you think she’s entirely credible, this is a really hard case to win because not only do you have to prove that it was intentional, you have to prove that it was done for the purpose of abusing, degrading or for sexual gratification. That’s a tough case to prove. So you may have a case here where the D.A. is saying, look, I’m concerned we’re not going to be able to win this case, but the sheriff is saying we don’t care, you should bring it anyway. ”
He added, “You’re going to see Cuomo’s attorney try to get this charge thrown out saying that there isn’t enough evidence here and that the procedure that was used should be determined to be invalid. But we know that Andrew Cuomo will be in court to respond to it, to show up. Where it goes from there, we don’t know yet.”
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