CNN announced Monday the network would be investigating the conduct of prime-time anchor Chris Cuomo after documents revealed the television host leveraged his role to protect his since-resigned brother in the New York governor’s mansion.
“Please let me help with the prep,” Cuomo wrote in a text to Melissa DeRosa, a top aide to his brother Andrew, as the governor faced a series of sexual harassment allegations this past spring. “We are making mistakes we can’t afford,” he added.
Chris Cuomo previously told viewers that he wasn’t an adviser to his older brother, he was there to “listen and offer my take.”
But new texts show he was advising and running interference for the former governor.
“We are making mistakes we can’t afford.” pic.twitter.com/LyVpuVb0x0
— Josefa Velásquez (@J__Velasquez) November 29, 2021
Other text messages made public by the New York attorney general’s office show the CNN anchor used his sources to gather information on what accusations were in the pipeline, and then colluded with his brother’s staff.
“Rumor going around from politico 1-2 more [people] coming out tomorrow,” DeRosa wrote in one text asking Chris to “check your sources.”
“On it,” Chris wrote back. Forty minutes later, Chris followed up, “no one has heard that yet.”
CNN said the revelations warranted an internal inquiry.
“The thousands of pages of additional transcripts and exhibits that were released today by the NY Attorney General deserve a thorough review and consideration,” CNN spokesman Matt Dornic told CNBC. “We will be having conversations and seeking additional clarity about their significance as they relate to CNN over the next several days.”
The same network brought back Jeffrey Toobin as its chief legal analyst after a mere suspension for masturbating in the camera during a zoom call.
Monday’s record dump is far from an isolated incident of explicit activism from the Cable “News” Network’s Chris Cuomo, who, at the onset of the first COVID outbreak, afforded his brother governor seemingly endless air time to engage in silly prime-time gimmicks. The anchor had already been caught by the Washington Post engaging in “strategy calls” advising his brother amid scandals.
In September last year, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson aired leaked audio wherein Chris coached President Donald Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen ahead of a 2018 interview, even going as far as giving Cohen lines to practice. At the time of rehearsal, Cohen faced criticism for hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels on Trump’s behalf in 2016. Cohen eventually pled guilty on eight counts including campaign finance violations and concluded his three-year sentence last week.
“I think the way this conversation goes is almost exactly the way we’re having it right now. Which is, where I say, ‘this looks shady,’ and you say, ‘it looks shady to you, because you’re coming with a specific intention,” Chris told Cohen.
Carlson described the audio received by Fox as a “one-man play” that featured Chris asking his own questions before answering them himself as Cohen.
“And why didn’t you let it all come out and let the people decide?” Chris asked himself, playing himself.
“Because it’s not a fair process,” Chris replied to himself, this time as Cohen. “They wouldn’t have had any of the counter facts and they would have had her, if she was somehow convinced to do it and people decided to believe that her denials were somehow less true than her admissions. I didn’t want to play that game. Everything was tilted against Mr. Trump.”
The CNN anchor’s attempt to come to his brother’s rescue was not only predictable, but is characteristic of the prime-time host masquerading on television as an objective journalist.