NYC NOW - August 24, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

Governor Kathy Hochul is calling on the White House to do more to help New York navigate the current migrant crisis. Plus, two years after his resignation, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo continues to challenge an investigation that found he sexually harassed nearly a dozen women while in office. And finally, reporter Danny O’Neil takes a look at how one hip-hop artist reinvented himself.

Good evening and welcome to NYC now. I'm Jenae Pierre for WNYC. We begin in Albany, where Governor Kathy Hokel is calling on the White House to do more to help New York navigate the current migrant crisis. In an address from the state capital Thursday, Hokel blamed the federal government for not doing enough to help alleviate the strain of housing thousands of newcomers, many of whom are homeless. Among her top asks of President Biden is an executive order making it easier for asylum seekers to be. receive immediate work authorization so they can be legally employed. Let them work. Until that happens, we'll continue to need funding and sites from the federal government to help cover the massive, massive expenses of sheltering tens of thousands of people.

Hogle says the state labor department will launch a program to place asylum seekers in jobs as soon as they're eligible to work. The White House says they'll continue to coordinate with the city and the state, and they once again called on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. This week marks exactly two years since New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's resignation. Thank you for the honor of serving you. And never forget, always stay New York tough, smart, united, disciplined, and loving. Cuomo had risen to new levels of popularity during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic,

but he was quickly undone by multiple scandals. The Attorney General's office found he had sexually harassed at least 11 different women while in office. Of course, everyone has a right to come forward, and we applaud their bravery and courage in doing so. But allegations must still be scrutinized and verified. Cuomo continues to fight to clear his name, and he's trying to use a lawsuit from one of his accusers to his advantage. WNYC's Albany reporter John Campbell explains it all with my colleague Michael Hill. That conversation after the break. Let's start with the lawsuit.

Who's suing the former governor and why? Cuomo was actually facing two different lawsuits. One is from a former aide by the name of Charlotte Bennett. She says the governor asked her all sorts of invasive questions about her personal life and a past sexual assault. The other is from a state trooper whose name so far has been kept anonymous. She's known as Trooper 1 in the court papers and the AG's report. The trooper says Cuomo handpicked her for her security detail and then made inappropriate remarks about what he wants in a partner and touched her in ways that she found uncomfortable like running his finger down her spine or putting his hand on her stomach. And it's the trooper's lawsuit that we're talking about today.

Cuomo's team has issued dozens of subpoenas in that case, including to several of the accusers. in the Attorney General's report. And he seems to be using them to try to poke holes in that report, which he sees is largely responsible for his downfall, even though he voluntarily resigned. Why is the governor allowed to subpoena these women, and how are they responding? So this is a civil case, and when you're sued in a civil case, you're entitled to discovery. Basically, you're allowed to get evidence about the other party and their claims, and that allows you to issue these subpoenas in circumstances and interview relevant people under oath.

Cuomo is seeking all sorts of documents from these women, text messages between them. He's subpoenaed some of their phone companies too, and his team argues that's all fair game because Trooper 1's attorney included their stories in her lawsuit. Cuomo's attorneys, they also claim these subpoenas are necessary to mount a defense, and of course he's entitled to mount a defense. and his spokesperson doesn't make any bones about trying to disprove the AG's report, which the Cuomo team has always taken issue with. The women, on the other hand, they see it very differently.

To them, they see this as retaliation from the governor, a way to kind of punish them for speaking out, basically. And most of Cuomo's accusers have not sued him at this point. And the ones who have been subpoenaed say they don't even know Trooper 1. Lindsay Boylan was the first former aide to accuse Cuomo of sexual harassment. Her attorney said Cuomo was trying to, quote, weaponize the litigation. John, is there anything that women can do to try to block these subpoenas or they just have to comply? They've taken a lot of different approaches here.

Lindsay Boylan, who we just mentioned, her attorneys are aggressively fighting Cuomo's subpoenas. They say they're overly broad and infringe on her personal privacy. And she doesn't even know Trooper 1, so they're. questioning how these subpoenas are relevant. Same is true of a former Cuomo staffer named Caitlin, whose last name is also anonymous in the court paper so far. There's actually this secondary debate about whether she should be allowed to remain anonymous. Then there's another former aide who accused Cuomo of fostering a toxic workplace. Her name's on a list, and she actually sat for a deposition last month. Cuomo's attorneys questioned her for more than

seven hours in Rochester. And now there's a battle over where whether that transcript should be made public. So what's the next step here? When can we expect these issues to be resolved? Well, it's going to take quite some time before these lawsuits are resolved. But in the meantime, there are all sorts of motions that a judge has to rule on. Two of Cuomo's former top A's are co-defendants in the suit. They're trying to be removed from the suit.

Cuomo's attorneys also say they're going to try to strike down the other women's accusations from Trooper 1's suit. That's another thing the judge will have to decide. But really one of the biggest questions is when will Cuomo himself have to sit down for a deposition? That was originally scheduled for April, but it's been postponed a couple times. The state troopers' attorneys say he's stalling and they're trying to get the judge to order a date for Cuomo to be deposed. That's WNYC's Albany reporter John Campbell talking with my colleague Michael Hill. What happens when you find yourself stuck in a gig you don't want to continue. That's hard enough for any artist, but it can be an extra challenge when you're a rapper.

There's no playbook for career transitions. Reporter Danny O'Neill takes a look at how one hip-hop talent reinvented himself. Before you hear how Jay Mumford became a drummer sought out by Grammy winners, you're going to need to know about Jay Zone. You better lock up through Buccotti at your party when the zone rolled blue in a fur coat that looked like I killed the whole Bronx Zoo. ASPCA is outside my house picking and because everything in my cope been previously living. That's Jay-Sah, the hip-hop persona Jay Mumford created more than 20 years ago.

He was a comedic rapper who oozed confidence and spit punchlines. And he dressed like an exaggeration of some of hip-hop's funniest cliches. Think fur coat paired with an athletic headband. As an artist, Mumford embodied the do-it-yourself ethos. that has always defined hip-hop. His studio was in his basement in Queens. He made beats. He rapped.

He earned a ton of credibility and a loyal following. There was just one problem. He'd grown to hate doing it. When I sat down with him at a Midtown coffee shop, he explained that he only began rapping to get noticed as a hip-hop producer. Which has been the curse of my career. Everything has been a vehicle for something else,

and I wind up getting notoriety for the vehicle itself rather than what I'm trying to do. And that's what happened to me as a producer. I didn't want to be a rap artist. Hip hop turns 50 this year, which means it's old enough to have, if not a full-fledged midlife crisis, at least a transition.

And by the time Mumford reached 30, he was sick of Jay-Zone, even if the audience wasn't. He stopped performing in 2007, and in 2011 published his memoir, Root for the villain. It was a eulogy of sorts for his hip-hop career. He said he was done.

The same week the book was published, Mumford returned home to find that his father had set up a drum set in the basement of the house Mumford shared with his grandmother. Now, mind you, I'm 34 years old, so, like, I'm not a kid. I'm a grown-ass man, but I felt like a little kid getting a drum set for Christmas or something. And when he came back that night, I'm like, why did you buy a drum set? Mumford's dad had noticed him playing around with a set of drumsticks, tapping out rhythms on couch cushions.

His father wanted to help him find a way back to music. Mumford practiced for more than a year before he asked to play with anyone. Then, he started jamming with Pablo Martine, a guitarist with the TomTom Club. Martine had been a sound engineer on the J-Zone records. Together they formed the do-rights, a funk band. He kept one foot in hip-hop, though.

In 2016, he performed at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas with a group where he alternated between drumming and rapping. There was only one part of that equation he liked, though. He quit hip-hop, full stop. After years of being a jack of all trades, he set about to be the master of just one. Drumming. He and Pablo Martine recorded the first due rights album in late 2016. Mumford also auditioned and got a gig with Ben Perini and the means of production.

Mumford began playing every gig he could get. If you're going to reinvent, I'm in my early 40s, I don't have time to make mistakes that a 20-year-old would make. Like, I got to get this right now. Or else? When COVID hit, Instagram became his outlet. He posted reels drumming in his basement and people noticed. Questlove of the roots. Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys.

Then Adrian Casava, a Grammy award-winning guitarist and founder of the Black Pumas. Cassada invited Mumford to perform with him at Austin City Limits in 2022. The due rights remain active, playing frequently in New York City. They released their latest single, Super Funk, on July 7th. The way that I'm tuning the drums, micing, hitting, playing those things, it's something that comes from not really being a drummer. The way I play drums comes from being a hip-hop producer. So now that I'm older, I can look back and say,

that gave me a huge leg up into finding my own son. now. That's reporter Danny O'Neill. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. We'll be back tomorrow.