The president of a major progressive political nonprofit has just been fired following an investigation that revealed he had helped former NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo respond to the sexual harassment claims that eventually brought down Cuomo’s administration.
Human Rights Campaign, the name of an organization focused on the LGBTQ+ community, fired President Alphonso David after carrying out its own investigation into details from NY AG Letitia James’s report on Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s abuses, whih revealed that David had met with Lindsey Boylan, the first woman to publicly accuse Cuomo, back in 2018, while he was serving as chief counsel to the governor. During the meeting, David allegedly told her she “had not been subject to sex discrimination, harassment or retaliation.” Boylan infamously accused Cuomo of making inappropriate comments and engaging in inappropriate touching during her time working for the governor.
Cuomo & David
David said Sunday that he was “shocked and sick to my stomach” when the report came out, and that he had “immediately called” on Cuomo to resign. He said he also called for Human Rights Campaign to conduct an independent review, and that he had “participated in it fully.” The HRC asked him to resign, he said, and he had refused.
While David apparently worked as an advisor to Cuomo, he didn’t report that work to the HRC. He allegedly advised the Cuomo legal team on how to discredit an accuser by drafting a letter that would undermine her credibility, the report found. David also distributed a memo on the accuser’s work history to Cuomo staff, and encouraged them to sign onto the letter even though he claimed he would not do so himself.
Following his ouster, David tweeted several statements, including one where he insisted that HRC didn’t raise “a shred of evidence of any wrongdoing” on his part. He said the organization told him that its own investigation into his dealings with Cuomo hadn’t yet completed, despite what they had said initially. David is now threatening a “legal challenge” over his ‘unjust’ dismissal.
“As a Black, gay man who has spent his whole life fighting for civil and human rights, they cannot shut me up,” he wrote. “Expect a legal challenge.”
Read the statements below:
Please read: Follow-Up Statement from Alphonso David, President of the Human Rights Campaign pic.twitter.com/nPyZk1M1de
— Alphonso David (@AlphonsoDavid) September 6, 2021
Update from Alphonso David pic.twitter.com/PAtqcEwvBg
— Alphonso David (@AlphonsoDavid) September 7, 2021
But the Human Rights Campaign says that David’s statement contains “significant untruths” about the investigations.
The 50-year-old David was the first civil rights attorney, and the first person of color, to lead the organization.
