Cuomo Will No Longer Face Impeachment, Assembly Leader Says

The leader of the New York State Assembly announced on Friday that lawmakers will suspend their ongoing impeachment investigation into Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, following his resignation earlier this week over sexual harassment allegations.

Carl E. Heastie, the speaker of the Assembly, said the impeachment inquiry was now moot since its main objective was to determine whether Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, should remain in office. Mr. Heastie, a Bronx Democrat, also said he believed lawmakers did not have the constitutional authority to impeach a governor who was no longer in office.

Mr. Cuomo, whose resignation will take effect later this month, said Tuesday he would step down after a report from the New York State attorney general that found that he had sexually harassed 11 women. The Assembly had been investigating the same allegations, among others, and began to move quickly toward impeachment once the report was released.

Mr. Heastie said that the impeachment investigation, which was being led by the Judiciary Committee, “did uncover credible evidence in relation to allegations that have been made in reference to the governor.”

Mr. Heastie said that evidence related not only to the sexual harassment claims, but also to Mr. Cuomo’s potential misuse of state resources in the writing of the governor’s book on leadership, which he wrote during the pandemic last year in a $5.1 million deal. Mr. Heastie also said there was evidence of the “misleading disclosure” of data on nursing home deaths.

“This evidence, we believe, could likely have resulted in articles of impeachment had he not resigned,” Mr. Heastie said in a statement.

Mr. Heastie said that he had asked Assemblyman Charles Lavine, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to turn over all the evidence to the “relevant investigatory authorities.”

The U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York also has been investigating the Cuomo administration’s attempt to obscure the full death toll of nursing home residents during the pandemic. At least five local prosecutors — in Manhattan, Albany, Westchester, Nassau and Oswego — have opened investigations into the sexual misconduct allegations against Mr. Cuomo.