Head of LGBTQ Human Rights Campaign Ousted for Helping Cuomo Discredit Victim

Counsel to the New York State Governor, Alphonso David attends the design unveiling of 9/1
Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images
Dr. Susan Berry

The president of the nation’s most powerful LGBTQ lobbying organization was ousted Tuesday for helping disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) discredit one of his reported sexual assault victims.

Alphonso David, who previously served as Cuomo’s chief counsel and legal advisor and had been hailed as Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) first black president, was fired by the group’s board of directors.

David took to Twitter Monday to post on his dispute with HRC board co-chairs Morgan Cox and Jodie Patterson, who, he said, “further elevated their effort to confuse and distract us from the truth.”

In his version of the “facts,” David claimed the HRC co-chairs gave him a deadline of 8:00 a.m. Saturday to let them know if he would resign.

“They didn’t offer a shred of evidence of any wrongdoing on my part when I asked repeatedly,” he said, adding that, after another day went by, the HRC co-chairs said “the investigation is not yet complete.”

“Their statements have been so contradictory that we will now see what if anything they produce,” he continued. “We’re all left wondering whether this whole process was pre-ordained from the start.”

On Tuesday, following his termination, David tweeted:

After I demanded truth and transparency, the HRC board co-chairs who should stand for human rights elected to hide in darkness. They unjustly provided notice of termination to me in order to end my fight for the integrity of the review process and for what is right. I asked for the report, they refused. They lied about producing the report. Now that they are being called to task, they tried to shut me up. As a Black, gay man who has spent his whole life fighting for civil and human rights, they cannot shut me up. Expect a legal challenge.

David, journalist Glenn Greenwald chronicled, “got caught helping ex-Gov. Cuomo leak personnel files of his accuser to the media and now depicts himself as the victim, refusing internal demands that he resign.”

The bombshell report of the investigation into Cuomo’s behavior, conducted by the New York Attorney General’s office and released in August, revealed that, in the case of accuser Lindsey Boylan, who served as a special advisor to Cuomo, the former governor’s executive chamber had recruited David to provide them with Boylan’s confidential personnel file.

Cuomo’s top aides then leaked Boylan’s file to the left-wing media in the wake of her tweet the former governor was “one of the biggest abusers of all time”:

Greenwald defined HRC as a “pure embodiment of swampy DC sleaze,” an organization that is essentially a “lavishly funded Democratic Party propaganda arm that masquerades as an LGBT advocacy group”:

“Remember when, in 2016, Bernie said that he thought HRC and Planned Parenthood – which had endorsed Hillary – were part of ‘the Democratic establishment’ and Dem establishment mavens pretended to be angry and offended as it if weren’t indisputably true?” Greenwald asked.

He observed Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who also came out as a lesbian in 2007, defended David on Sunday:

“Of course – even after he got caught helping ex-Gov. Cuomo leak personnel files to the media to smear one of his accusers,” Greenwald said of Weingarten.

“Do you see who these people are???” he asked.

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