In their submitting, Cuomo’s attorneys argued “an apparent rush to judgement and caving to uninformed public and internal pressure that was based on speculation and assumption rather than facts.”
They wrote that the $125 million he’s in search of represents not simply $15 million remaining from his CNN contract but in addition future “decades of earnings” that they argue he has been disadvantaged of as a result of “CNN’s calculated efforts to tar and feather him” left him “untouchable in the world of broadcast journalism.”
Their submitting additionally lashes out at CNN’s prime executives, basically accusing them of a number of the identical moral transgressions that ensnared Cuomo.
Media critics had raised issues about CNN’s choice to let Cuomo interview his brother about his dealing with of New York’s pandemic disaster in a collection of jocular broadcasts in the spring of 2020. In the submitting, Cuomo’s group claims that CNN management “demanded” he conduct these interviews, “despite Cuomo’s and Gov. Cuomo’s expressed reservations.”
Last March, The Washington Post reported that Gov. Cuomo organized for his brother and different well-connected individuals to get particular entry to state-administered coronavirus assessments early in the pandemic, when assessments have been onerous to come back by. In the submitting, Chris Cuomo’s attorneys declare that Zucker and Gollust additionally “demanded priority testing from Gov. Cuomo’s administration,” and that the governor’s employees “felt it had no choice but to fulfill” due to their “power over [Chris] Cuomo’s career.” Zucker and Gollust declined to touch upon the declare.
The submitting additionally alleged that Zucker and Gollust “acted as advisors” to then-Gov. Cuomo and offered him “with talking points and strategies,” a cost that each have beforehand denied.
At the time of Cuomo’s firing in December, CNN had additionally been made conscious of a criticism of sexual misconduct made in opposition to Cuomo by a former colleague at ABC News. On Wednesday, his authorized group maintained that the criticism was “entirely fabricated.”
Zucker and Gollust’s departures got here after CNN’s father or mother firm, WarnerMedia, employed a legislation agency to research the corporate’s dealing with of the Cuomo matter. While being questioned about it, the 2 acknowledged that they’d begun a romantic relationship, a violation of firm insurance policies.
Cuomo’s camp is in search of arbitration earlier than JAMS, a non-public various dispute decision supplier. A spokesperson for WarnerMedia and CNN declined to touch upon Cuomo’s arbitration demand, which was first reported by Deadline.com on Wednesday.