Scott Stringer and allies allege his accuser Jean Kim lied about sexual misconduct claims in flurry of sworn statements

Scott Stringer — the former city comptroller whose visions of becoming New York mayor faded away after being accused of sexual misconduct — filed several sworn statements Wednesday contending his accuser Jean Kim lied about specific circumstances surrounding their relationship.

The statements, signed off on by Stringer and several allies, were submitted in Manhattan Supreme Court as part of a defamation suit the 2021 mayoral contender filed last December. They were filed along with Stringer’s rebuttal to Kim’s motion to dismiss the case, a response that accuses Kim of committing a “malicious act by a person bearing a long-held grudge.”

Stringer’s accuser, Kim, has maintained the two were not engaged in a consensual relationship at the time of the alleged misconduct and that Stringer pushed himself on her. Stringer has denied those claims and in December filed his defamation suit against Kim claiming she lied and did “irreparable harm to him and his political future.”

The accusations against Stringer — which came to light amid a heated election that eventually resulted in Eric Adams victory — led to several high-profile politicos rescinding endorsements for Stringer.

On Wednesday, in the most recent — and sensational — court filings on the case thus far, Stringer and several witnesses claim Kim lied about the nature of their relationship and about working as an intern on one of his political campaigns. One affidavit, sworn out by Stringer himself, also rebuts a sworn statement from Kim’s husband, Anthony Caifano, about the timing of Kim’s decision to come forward.

Alisa Schierman, who worked on Stringer’s public advocate campaign in 2001, said in one sworn statement that she witnessed Kim and Stringer “making out ... for an extended period” during a night out with campaign pals at Merchants Bar on the East Side.

“At some point during the evening, I went downstairs and observed Scott making out with Jean Kim. Scott and Jean Kim were sitting in a booth and were both active participants in the kissing, which went on for an extended period,” Schierman said. “Based on what I witnessed in 2001, I do not believe Jean Kim’s accusations against Scott are true.”

Mike McGuire, director of the Mason Tenders’ District Council PAC, said both Stringer and Kim were both part of his social circle in 2001 when Stringer ran for public advocate and that “it was well-understood in our friend group that Scott and Jean were hooking up.”

“I was shocked when I heard of Jean’s accusation against Scott,” he said. “I believe the accusations to be untrue and I believe someone put her up to say what she said.”

McGuire doesn’t elaborate on that final claim in his affidavit and could not immediately be reached for comment. Kim’s lawyer Patricia Pastor declined to comment.

In March, months after Stringer filed his defamation suit, Kim filed a separate lawsuit against Stringer seeking unspecified damages for his unwanted attention. A month after making her initial accusation in 2021, she filed a formal complaint with the state’s attorney general. A spokesperson for the attorney general did not immediately respond to questions about the status of that complaint.

When Kim first made her claims against Stringer public two years ago, she said she was working as an unpaid intern on his 2001 public advocate campaign when, according to her, Stringer asked her “Why won’t you f--- me?” repeatedly.

In an affidavit submitted in February, Kim said Stringer “didn’t give me a title of ‘intern’ or ‘volunteer,’ but that she “interpreted his description of the job as an internship based on my previous experience with unpaid internships.”

Stringer and David Gringer, who directed his 2001 campaign’s internship program, both pushed back on that interpretation, as well as Kim’s initial assertion that she served as an intern — what they saw as an effort to make Stringer’s alleged misconduct seem worse.

“As the individual responsible for hiring and supervising the interns, I am absolutely certain that she was not an intern,” Gringer, who worked in a senior position as the campaign’s field director, said in his sworn statement.

Gringer also pushed back on Kim’s own sworn assertions that she worked with Stringer on a “daily” basis and that her experience on the campaign was “immersive.”

“Ms. Kim did not have an ‘immersive’ role on the campaign or anything close to it. The statements in her declaration about the amount of time she spent on the campaign are untrue — she certainly did not work on the campaign ‘daily,’” he said. “I don’t remember her doing anything on the campaign in May, June, or July of 2001, and later in the summer she was, at most, an occasional volunteer. Ms. Kim also was not asked and did not routinely (or to my knowledge ever) attend ‘political events’ with Scott.”

In a separate affidavit, Stringer asserts interns on his advocate campaign “were exclusively high school and college students” and that Kim “was never an intern.”

“Contrary to what she claimed in her affidavit, Ms. Kim neither held a role on my campaign akin to ‘personal assistant’ nor did her campaign volunteer work require daily interactions with me,” he contends.

Stringer went on in the affidavit to repeat his assertion that he and Kim were in an “on-and-off” relationship that “involved making out on multiple occasions when we were socializing at various city bars.”

“I know with certainty that the conduct on each of those occasions was consensual on my part and hers,” he said.

But it isn’t only Kim’s honesty that Stringer is calling into question in court.

Kim’s husband, Anthony Caifano, said in a sworn statement in February that a Stringer campaign ad that ran “near the end of April 2021″ is what ultimately prompted his wife to go public with her accusation.

“it came to a head when we were watching the evening news and a ‘Stringer for Mayor’ commercial came on,” Caifano said in his affidavit. “It was at that point that Jean had finally had enough of carrying around her nightmare of how Stringer treated her during the Public Advocate campaign. She decided to go public.”

In a sworn response, Stringer contends that’s “impossible” because his first TV ad didn’t air until April 28, 2021 — “the day of Ms. Kim’s press conference, which was one day after reporters were briefed on the allegations she planned to make.”

Statements from two other former Stringer staffers suggest there may have been motivations other than protecting other women at the heart of Kim’s allegations.

In an affidavit sworn out by Tyrone Stevens, Stringer’s former press secretary, Stevens claims that months after Kim first made the allegations he learned through a contact on another mayoral campaign that days before Kim’s initial announcement, staffers from Andrew Yang’s mayoral campaign “held an internal conference call” to game out how to react to the allegations once they aired publicly.

A source from the Yang campaign denied such a conference took place.

Sacha Owen, a longtime Stringer staffer, suggests there may have been yet another motive for the accusations — that Kim still held a grudge for not being offered a paid position on Stringer’s 2013 comptroller campaign.

Owen noted that Kim reached out twice about working on that campaign, and that when she wasn’t offered a paid post, Kim went to work for former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who at the time was running against Stringer for comptroller.

“This was not a typical campaign where we had the time or money to hire a broad group of constituency outreach staff. We had a barebones staff and were outspent two to one,” Owen said in her affidavit. “Ms. Kim and I discussed this on the phone in 2013. We argued about it and I asked why she would do this. I remember her saying that we wouldn’t hire her and that she needed the money and the job.”

In her sworn statement, Kim confirmed that she reached out to Stringer’s comptroller campaign, but she apparently misidentified Owen as “Sacha Cohen” — a discrepancy Gringer made note of in his statement.

“Scott’s campaign manager was not, as Ms. Kim says in her declaration, someone named ‘Sacha Cohen.’ The only Sacha Cohen that I am aware of is the actor who plays Borat,” he said in a reference to Sacha Baron Cohen.