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Longtime Cuomo aide Gareth Rhodes, who has been a fixture at Cuomo’s COVID-19 briefings and has been crunching virus-related numbers for a year, announced he will be stepping back and returning to his position as deputy supervisor and special counsel at the Department of Financial Services.
Rhodes, who was not present at Cuomo’s first COVID-19 briefing on Wednesday, March 3 since sexual harassment claims were levied against the governor, said that he has already informed the administration of his plans to step away.
According to reports, Rhodes, who had one of Cuomo’s accusers as a guest at his 2019 wedding, where Cuomo was the officiant, left the task force in protest over the sexual harassment allegations against the governor in the past few weeks.
“Last week as I approached one year since moving to Albany to join the NYS COVID task force, I decided it was time, given the progress of the vaccination program and continued decline of COVID numbers, to return to my previous role at the Department of Financial Services.”
Rhodes has been one of Cuomo’s top aides since the governor took office a decade ago in 2011, though he took a break to attend law school and also unsuccessfully ran for Congress against John Faso in the 19th District, which includes parts of the Hudson Valley.
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