Chris Cuomo, a television journalist and younger brother of former governor of New York,  Andrew Cuomo, has been fired from his position at CNN for helping his brother in defending sexual harassment accusations. Released text messages by the New York Attorney general between Cuomo and one of his brother’s top aides, seem to be the leading factor in his termination.

The text messages between Chris Cuomo, his brother, and his brother’s top aid, Mellisa DeRosa, show Cuomo attempting to formulate his brothers’ response to help him against his sexual harassment accusations. Allegedly Cuomo claimed that the allegations should be framed as a result of cancel culture dominating the liberal wing his brother is dominating. He had also claimed to identify one of his brother’s accusers. 

Chris Cuomo himself is facing accusations of his own as well. CNN was informed of an accusation by Debra S. Katz, a prominent employment lawyer. The accusation reportedly comes from an anonymous source as per their request. Katz said her client came out with these allegations now because she was outraged by Cuomo’s hypocrisy of concern for targets of sexual harassment. 

A CNN spokeswoman recently had this to say about the situation: “Based on the report we received regarding Chris’s conduct with his brother’s defense, we had cause to terminate. When new allegations came to us this week, we took them seriously, and saw no reason to delay taking immediate action.”  

A representative for Chris Cuomo defended Cuomo saying that “These apparently anonymous allegations are not true.”

In a tweet by the official CNN communications Twitter account, they made a statement on the termination of Chris Cuomo, “Chris Cuomo was suspended earlier this week pending further evaluation of new information that came to light about his involvement with his brother’s defense. We retained a respected law firm to conduct the review, and have terminated him, effective immediately. While in the process of that review, additional information has come to light. Despite the termination, we will investigate as appropriate.”

The “additional information” appears to be the accusations brought to light against Cuomo by employment lawyer Debra S. Kats. 

In response to his termination, Chris Cuomo tweeted a statement on December 4.

“This is not how I want my time at CNN to end but I have already told you why and how I helped my brother. So let me now say as disappointing as this is, I could not be more proud of the team at Cuomo Prime Time and the work we did as CNN’s #1 show in the most competitive time slot. I owe them all and will miss that group of special people who did really important work.”

CNN journalists have claimed that Cuomo had violated journalistic integrity. Cuomo said he didn’t tell anyone at CNN that he had reached out to another journalist about their reporting on his brother. A CNN spokesperson had this to say.

“When Chris admitted to us that he had offered advice to his brother’s staff, he broke our rules and we acknowledged that publicly,” the spokesperson said on Tuesday. “But we also appreciated the unique position he was in and understood his need to put family first and job second.”