New York AG’s Chief of Staff Resigns amid Sexual-Harassment Investigation: Report
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The New York attorney general’s longtime chief of staff has resigned after being hit with at least two sexual-harassment allegations, according to a new report.
Attorney general Letitia James hired a law firm to investigate multiple allegations brought forward by a political consultant — rather than the victims themselves — against her now-former chief of staff Ibrahim Khan, who inappropriately touched and non-consensually kissed at least one woman, sources reportedly told the New York Times. The allegations against Khan, who has worked for James in various capacities since 2013, involved former employees of the office, according to the report.
The paper also reported that one woman who filed a complaint was told on Friday that her allegation of inappropriate touching and unwanted kissing had been substantiated.
“The office of attorney general has protocols in place to thoroughly investigate any allegation of misconduct,” the AG’s office told the Times. “The office takes these matters with the utmost seriousness and this situation is no different. An independent, impartial investigation was conducted, and the employee has since resigned.”
For his part, Khan said in a statement to the paper that his resignation was not related to the investigation. “I’ve been slated to leave the office for the private sector at the end of this year,” he said. “This is unrelated to an investigation which, nevertheless, found no official workplace misconduct.”
In 2017, when Khan served as James’s chief of staff during her time as New York City public advocate, an employee in the office accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting her at a holiday party, according to a since-deleted New York Post story cited by the Times. The report said the city’s Department of Investigation and the Manhattan district attorney’s office ultimately closed investigations into the matter.
The recent investigation comes more than a year after James hired investigators to review several sexual-harassment allegations into then–New York governor Andrew Cuomo. “No man — no matter how powerful — can be allowed to harass women,” James said in a statement after investigators found that Cuomo had sexually harassed multiple women over a span of seven years. Cuomo later resigned.
Khan apparently spoke with a campaign consultant for Lindsey Boylan, the first woman to accuse Cuomo of sexual harassment, about Boylan’s allegations, potentially serving as the first point of communication between Boylan and the AG’s office, per the report.
A spokesperson for Cuomo noted that the former governor has always denied the allegations and told the Times that “with each passing day it’s more and more apparent what a hypocritical and politically motivated sham this whole ordeal was.”
