Ross said Cuomo sent her an email about an hour later with the subject line “Now that I think of it … I am ashamed.”
“He should have been,” Ross continued. “But my question today is the same as it was then: Was he ashamed of what he did, or was he embarrassed because my husband saw it? (He apologized first in his email to my ‘very good and noble husband’ and then to me for ‘even putting you in such a position.’) Mr. Cuomo may say this is a sincere apology. I’ve always seen it as an attempt to provide himself with legal and moral coverage to evade accountability.”
According to the email, which Ross shared with The New York Times, Cuomo also wrote, “Christian Slater got arrested for a (kind of) similar act (though borne of an alleged negative intent, unlike my own).” The actor was arrested in 2005 for allegedly grabbing a woman’s buttock on the street. According to The New York Times article, he was charged with third degree sexual abuse but the charge was later dropped. His publicist Evelyn Karamanos called the incident a “misunderstanding” in a comment to the newspaper at the time.
“Mr. Cuomo, a former lawyer, appeared to use his short apology to legally differentiate the two incidents,” Ross wrote. “He suggested Mr. Slater had ‘negative intent’ while he, Mr. Cuomo, did not. He seemed to have a keen understanding of what accountability might look like back then; today we have no clear idea if either he or CNN is interested in accountability.”