Alphonso David has been fired as president of the Human Rights Campaign after his role in assisting disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s attempted rebound from sexual harassment allegations was detailed in a report.
The HRC and HRC Foundation Boards of Directors voted Monday night to oust David, who served as Cuomo’s chief counsel from 2015 to 2019, after conducting an internal investigation into the details revealed in New York State Attorney General Letitia James’ bombshell Aug. 3 sexual harassment report.
According to the AG report, David released a copy of Cuomo-accuser Lindsey Boylan’s personnel files when asked to do so by former top secretary of state, Melissa DeRosa.
David was no longer working for the Cuomo administration at the time documents were released in Dec. 2020 after Boylan tweeted that Cuomo had sexually harassed her “for years” when she worked as a Empire State Development staffer.
“This conduct in assisting Governor Cuomo’s team, while president of HRC, was in violation of HRC’s Conflict of Interest policy and the mission of HRC,” Morgan Cox and Jodie Patterson, Human Rights Campaign and Foundation Board Chairs, said in a statement announcing David’s removal as head of the largest LGBTQ advocacy organization.
By Monday night, David’s name was already scrubbed from HRC’s website.
HRC has accused David of mischaracterizing their internal investigation into his actions in a bid to keep his job.
“Yesterday and today, Mr. David released a statement that included significant untruths about the investigation and his status with the organization,” Cox and Patterson said in their statement.
The duo sent a company-wide email Monday to staffers, addressing David’s public declaration Sunday afternoon that he will not resign from his position despite being urged to step down.
“Yesterday, you received an email from Alphonso David. We were very surprised and disappointed by the inaccuracies in his portrayal of events,” the pair wrote.
“Over the past month, the boards of the Human Rights Campaign and Human Rights Campaign Foundation have undertaken a thorough investigation into Mr. David’s conduct regarding Governor Cuomo through the Board’s Executive Committees with the assistance of counsel. That investigation will soon be completed, and the Boards will then have more to say.”
“As that process was nearing its conclusion, Mr. David was offered, at the direction of the Committee, the opportunity to discuss in good faith a separation from HRC, and his lawyers began that discussion on his behalf. Mr. David’s email yesterday is unfortunate given his mischaracterizations, including the assertion that there was “no indication of wrongdoing on his part,” they added, disputing David’s claim Sunday that the board’s inquiry into his conduct was complete and his record cleared.
Later Monday night, David responded to his firing, arguing in a statement posted to Twitter that HRC “unjustly provided notice of termination to me in order to end my fight for the integrity of the review process and for what is right.”
“I asked for the report, they refused. They lied about producing the report … As a Black, gay man who has spent his whole life fighting for civil and human rights, they cannot shut me up. Expect a legal challenge,” he wrote.
Two days after the AG report was published HRC staffers called for David’s resignation, excoriating his actions in a closed door company meeting.
Earlier Monday before he was fired, David tweeted a separate statement, arguing the request for his resignation came without “a shred of evidence” and also argued “neither my lawyers nor I ever suggested at any point that I would even consider stepping down.”
“It’s very sad to see what he is doing now, both to the organization and himself. Leaders must always look in the mirror and hold themselves accountable,” Boylan told The Post, referring to David’s comments.
On Sunday, Boylan tweeted that David helped “to smear me when I spoke publicly about the abusive monster we both worked for over a period of years.”