Eric Schneiderman’s Reputation: From ‘Wouldn’t Get a Bawdy Joke’ to Brute, Overnight

ALBANY, N.Y. — To many in Albany, New York’s attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, seemed staid and somewhat standoffish: a teetotaler who favored coffee shops over bars, liked yoga and health food and preferred high-minded intellectual and legal debate to the hand-to-hand combat of New York’s political arena.

But that carefully cultivated image of a caring, progressive Renaissance man came crashing down on Monday night after the publication of an expose by The New Yorker, detailing allegations of a sordid and stomach-turning double life, including Schneiderman’s physical and psychological abuse of four women with whom he had been romantically involved. The attorney general’s behavior, the article said, had been exacerbated by alcohol abuse and punctuated by insults of the very liberal voters and activists who had held him up as a champion willing to deliver a fearless counterpunch to President Donald Trump.

The article ricocheted around the New York and national political scene at a quark’s pace, leading to nearly immediate calls for Schneiderman’s resignation from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a fellow Democrat, and other officials, and his almost-as-speedy, almost-grudging acceptance of his political fate.

He gave himself one day to clear out his desk, his reign officially ending at 5 p.m. Tuesday.

The resignation brought to an abrupt end his two terms in office and two decades in public service, marked with accomplishments that included successfully suing Trump over fraud involving Trump University — winning $25 million shortly after the 2016 election — and more recently targeting serial sexual abusers like Harvey Weinstein, suing the Hollywood mogul and firmly embracing the #MeToo movement.

That hypocrisy — professing to defend women while secretly, according to The New Yorker article, beating them — seemed particularly rank.

Schneiderman has denied assaulting anyone, asserting that he engaged in “role-playing and other consensual sexual activity.”

“It’s so devastating on so many levels because he did great things in office, as a state senator, as attorney general,” said Linda Rosenthal, a Democratic assemblywoman from the Upper West Side, who has known Schneiderman since before his political career began. “Yet behind the scenes, he treated women like garbage.”

Schneiderman, 63, had widely been considered a future contender for governor in New York, a solidly blue state where Cuomo is also said to harbor higher ambitions. Schneiderman’s campaign accounts were substantial, with more than $8.5 million in the bank, an increasingly high profile burnished by his long battles with Trump and appearances on national talk shows.

The shock of the allegations was shared inside the attorney general’s office itself, which has a workforce of about 1,800 people, including 700 lawyers. “There were no allegations against him made in the office,” said Amy Spitanick, a spokeswoman for the attorney general. “And we were not aware of any allegations until we got press calls.”

Those calls apparently began to land Monday morning, after several weeks of rumors — in Albany and elsewhere — about a possible investigation into Schneiderman’s personal life and behavior. The graphic details of the women’s stories seemed even more stark considering the enlightened-man elements of his biography and his standing on the Upper West Side, the city’s traditional bastion of its most liberal-minded voters.

Schneiderman was a liberal fixture of the state Senate for years, with a deep knowledge of the intricacies of public policy and a willingness to engage in details. But former staffers also said Schneiderman could be detached from the minutiae of the attorney general’s office and rarely spoiled for political fights. While his predecessors, Eliot Spitzer and Cuomo, are large and assertive personalities, Schneiderman had a more passive demeanor, at least from what most people saw.

He sometimes complained of insomnia. He was known to come into the office later than most employees and had mentioned taking sleep aids. One person who worked in the attorney general’s office said Schneiderman infrequently got to the office before 11 a.m. and had to be awakened by his staff for earlier events on numerous occasions. There were also a couple of weekend events that had to be canceled because Schneiderman said he fell in the shower or suffered some other mishap at home. In another example, another person who worked with Schneiderman in 2014 recalled an incident in which the attorney general canceled a series of news conferences after injuring himself in a hotel room in Albany and requiring help from a security detail. There was also concern in his office that Schneiderman, who is divorced with a grown daughter, dated women who were significantly younger.

Before those assertions, Schneiderman had been known for being a health aficionado. He gave out books on wellness, with titles like “Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation.” He attended retreats at the Kripalu Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and did yoga in the office. (Rosenthal noted that she and Schneiderman had co-sponsored a bill, in separate chambers, that protected yoga studios from certain regulations.) He might have a glass or two of wine at a fundraiser, former staffers recalled, but nothing excessive.

But in The New Yorker article, the women who had accused Schneiderman of violence said that many of the acts occurred after alcohol had been consumed. There had been tabloid stories describing Schneiderman’s alleged drug use — which had also been passed around by Trump. His office denied the accounts, though The New Yorker article said Schneiderman had misused Xanax.

On Tuesday, Schneiderman’s fellow Democrats in Albany were expressing shock at the details, citing a public persona that was far more subdued, almost to the point of being restrained. “He seemed beyond strait-laced,” said Assemblyman Sean Ryan, D-Buffalo. “The kind of guy who wouldn’t get a bawdy joke.”

Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell, whom Schneiderman defeated in the 1998 primary for state Senate, his first elected position in Albany, also said that he had never seen the attorney general drink, but had been struck by a certain professional arrogance, perhaps born of his pedigree: Amherst College, Harvard Law and a father, Irwin Schneiderman, who was a prominent corporate lawyer. “He had a tendency to talk down to people,” O’Donnell said. “And didn’t know he was doing it.”

O’Donnell said the accusations were “horrifying” and didn’t “comport with the person I interacted with,” though he had sometimes been curious about Schneiderman’s succession of girlfriends. “I kind of always wondered why was that,” he said. “Here’s a handsome, wealthy guy with a beautiful apartment on West End Avenue and all these beautiful women. And no one is choosing to stay.”

Schneiderman’s reputation for propriety was so entrenched in Albany that he was meant to be lampooned at a legislative correspondents’ variety show Monday night — before the story broke — for being “so lame” and unscathed by the scandals that have often waylaid Albany politicians. After the magazine article was published, that musical number was altered, exchanging Schneiderman’s name for Chuck Schumer’s, the Democratic senator from New York.