Assembly Judiciary Committee member forecasts ‘another month’ with impeachment inquiry

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said Tuesday night that the Assembly Judiciary Committee is moving to conclude its impeachment investigation into Gov. Andrew Cuomo “as quickly as possible.”

But what does that timeline actually look like?

“The way I’m reading the tea leaves on this is I think it’ll be about another month,” Assembly Judiciary Committee member Phil Steck told The Capitol Pressroom on Wednesday morning.

That timeframe would include ending their investigation and drafting formal articles of impeachment, which would need to be voted on by the entire Assembly chamber and then there would be a trial in the state Senate to remove the governor.

“Drafting articles of impeachment is like not like just snapping your fingers, and it happens instantly,” the Capital Region Democrat said.

Based on the findings unveiled Tuesday by the state attorney general’s inquiry into the governor’s conduct, which found Cuomo harassed 11 women, Steck assumed one of the charges brought by the committee would be sexual harassment. He stressed that the committee would also likely want to wrap up the other angles of its investigations, which include the governor’s pandemic book deal and the administration’s handling of nursing home information, before starting to draft articles of impeachment.

“It’s very important to address those as well – not for the purpose of delay – but for the purpose of being comprehensive, and I’m hoping that we can do that certainly in a month’s time.” Steck said.

“There are a lot of people who find the behavior of the governor reprehensible, which it is, but also the governor’s attempts to increase power unto himself need to be addressed, so we can restore some balance in this relationship between the governor and the legislature,” he added later in the interview.