![\"Andrew](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/DSC_7689.jpg\" "\\"NYC")
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Former Gov. and independent mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo.<\/p>\n
Photo by Lloyd Mitchell<\/p>\n
Independent mayoral hopeful Andrew Cuomo<\/a> on Thursday again refused to release a list of clients he amassed as a private legal consultant in response to Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani\u2019s<\/a> video challenge to do so earlier this week<\/a>.<\/p>\n Cuomo made the remarks during an unrelated Aug. 14 news conference, a couple of days after Mamdani released the social media video recounting news reports of incidents related to the former governor\u2019s private consultancy \u2014 Innovation Strategies LLC. He founded the firm in 2022 after resigning as governor the previous year amid nearly a dozen sexual harassment allegations that he denies.<\/p>\n In the video, Mamdani \u2014 a Queens Assembly member \u2014 attempted to link Cuomo to accused child-sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein via the former governor\u2019s longtime friend: Andrew Farkas. Cuomo and Farkas worked together on a marina project in Puerto Rico, Mamdani says, citing The New York Times<\/a>, after he resigned.<\/p>\n Farkas, he also noted, had at one point worked on a similar project with Epstein<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n Mamdani also mentioned an April Bloomberg report that Cuomo advised a\u00a0cryptocurrency exchange<\/a>\u00a0facing federal investigation and a Politico story that he\u00a0did not disclose<\/a> $2.6 million in nuclear stock options to the city\u2019s Conflicts of Interest Board.<\/p>\n During Cuomo\u2019s Thursday event, he told reporters that since resigning as governor he has \u201cdone podcasts,\u201d \u201cadvocated for certain causes that are dear to me\u201d and practiced law. He said that none of his clients had business before the city or state governments and that he had not done any lobbying work.<\/p>\n Even so, Cuomo declined to disclose the names of any of his consulting clients, as he has repeatedly done since at least April.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThey were private clients, and this is attorney-client privilege,\u201d Cuomo said.\n<\/p>\n Cuomo\u2019s spokesperson previously told the New York Post<\/a> that Cuomo didn\u2019t know Epstein and that you can \u201csmell the desperation\u201d from Mamdani in his video.<\/p>\n The spokesperson, Rich Azzopardi, sought to refute Mamdani\u2019s other points in the video in a statement to amNewYork.\n<\/p>\n \u201cThe stock options were publicly disclosed for years by federal regulators and the only question was if and how to report them on ethics forms,\u201d Azzopardi said. \u201cThey were properly documented after consulting to COIB the same day it was brought to our attention and the marina project never went anywhere and he wasn\u2019t compensated.\u201d<\/p>\n Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec responded: \u201cWe learned Andrew Cuomo advised an offshore illegal crypto exchange and failed to disclose nearly $3 million in nuclear stock options only after investigative journalists uncovered it \u2014 what else is he hiding?\u201d<\/p>\n Mudslinging between Mamdani and Cuomo<\/p>\n Mamdani released the video as part of a nearly week-long mudslinging match<\/a> with Cuomo. The kerfuffle began last Friday when Cuomo\u2019s X account slammed Mamdani<\/a> for living in a $2,300-a-month rent-stabilized Astoria apartment, despite his $142,000-a-year Assembly member salary and \u201cprivileged\u201d background.<\/p>\n Cuomo has used Mamdani\u2019s apartment to paint him as a hypocrite, due to his identity as a democratic socialist who is pushing a rent freeze for stabilized tenants as one of his core campaign proposals. He even went so far as to propose state legislation, named after Mamdani, that would require tenants to spend 30% of their income on rent in order to fill a vacant stabilized unit.<\/p>\n