KEY POINTS

  • President Biden told a Cuomo aide that he admired the governor's "tremendous balls"
  • The president paired his praise with indecent gestures
  • Cuomo is currently facing investigations over a COVID-19 cover-up and sexual harassment allegations

President Joe Biden once spoke about New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s “enormous balls” and said it was his “favorite thing” about the Democratic governor, a new article has revealed.

Biden, who was vice president at the time, was speaking with a Cuomo aide before a jobs event in Rochester in 2015. The aide recounted the incident to The New York Times Magazine, which reported the conversation in an 8,500 feature in the weekly magazine and on the Times' website.

“Can I tell you my favorite thing about the governor?” Biden asked the aide. “He’s got tremendous balls. Absolutely enormous balls.”

Biden accompanied his statement with an indecent gesture by cupping his hands as if cradling melons, the aide said.

In another incident noted in The Times’ extensive profile of the governor, a former associate said Cuomo once likened himself to Sonny Corleone, the violent son in “The Godfather,” shortly after he was elected state attorney general in 2006.

“I loom over that table,” Cuomo said, according to the associate. “In their minds, I’m Sonny Corleone and I’m capable of anything.”

Another associate recounted an incident in which Cuomo, who was then in his first term as governor, interrupted a strategy session about Occupy Wall Street at the mansion to brag about his sexual prowess.

“If I have one gift,” Cuomo told the people present at the meeting, “it’s being able to see around the corners of politics.” Cuomo also remarked that he was skilled at oral sex, according to the associate.

A different aide revealed that Cuomo complained about having to attend an event for the Jewish holiday Sukkot — during which meals are eaten in a sukkah, a structure built with tree branches and other organic materials to represent the huts in which Israelites dwelt during their 40 years of wandering in the desert after escaping from slavery in Egypt.

“These people and their f--king tree houses,” Cuomo reportedly vented.

The Times' magazine feature comes amid a series of federal and state investigations into the Cuomo administration’s cover-up of COVID-19 deaths in the state’s nursing homes as well as numerous sexual harassment allegations.

On April 7, an unnamed accuser said Cuomo summoned her to his mansion to resolve minor issues on his mobile phone. The former aide said the governor later groped her breasts over her bra.

“I remember I walked out and he walked back into his office. ... I remember going downstairs and escorting myself out and going to my car and sitting there for a second and going, 'OK, I have to now go back into the Capitol, go back to my desk and do my job and pretend that, like, that didn’t just happen,'” she said.

Three women have accused New York Governor Andrew Cuomo of harassment, including two former aides
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo AFP / Johannes EISELE