The departure of Kirsten Gillibrand's longtime deputy chief of staff, Anne Bradley, comes at a critical moment for the New York Senator's campaign. | AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite 2020 elections Top Gillibrand aide to leave amid questions over sexual harassment investigation

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s longtime deputy chief of staff, Anne Bradley, is leaving her Senate office next month, according to a person familiar with her plans.

Bradley has been with Gillibrand since 2007 and had been planning to retire later this year. She moved up her departure after POLITICO detailed an internal sexual harassment investigation Bradley helped lead in 2018, which ended with a young female staffer resigning in protest over how Gillibrand’s office handled the incident and the post-investigation fallout.


Bradley’s exit comes at a critical moment for Gillibrand. The New York Democrat officially announced her candidacy for president Sunday, after a two-month exploratory period, and has scheduled a kickoff speech outside a Trump hotel in New York City on March 24.

A Gillibrand spokesperson declined to comment.

Gillibrand told reporters last week she had no regrets about how the episode was handled, but she told The Hill last weekend that “where we did see some human error was post-investigation.”

Bradley and Gillibrand’s general counsel, Keith Castaldo, took the lead on the sexual harassment investigation last summer, along with Gillibrand’s former chief of staff, Jess Fassler — who now manages Gillibrand’s presidential campaign. CNN reported last week that Bradley’s role had been restructured and would no longer include handling such investigations and personnel cases. The Gillibrand spokesperson declined to comment on the report.

A young female aide in Gillibrand’s office alleged last summer that Gillibrand’s longtime driver, Abbas Malik, made unwelcome sexual advances shortly after the senator told Malik he would be put into a supervisory role over her. The woman also told her superiors that Malik made repeated demeaning remarks about other women in the office.

The office said that it could not substantiate the allegations and could only corroborate one of the alleged inappropriate remarks, which did not rise to the level of sexual harassment. Malik was stripped of his expected promotion, which would have come with a raise, and the office moved his desk away from the woman’s.

But Gillibrand’s office did not contact two former staffers the woman said could corroborate her allegations that Malik made repeated inappropriate comments about female staffers. One of those staffers and multiple others told POLITICO that Malik had also made crass, misogynistic remarks in front of them as well, including making light of rape. After reviewing that new reporting, Gillibrand’s office opened up another investigation and fired Malik earlier this month.

The woman wrote in her resignation letter that she initially “felt satisfied there had been a fair process” in the investigation, but she documented a series of tense interactions with Bradley and Fassler that eventually culminated in her departure.

The day after the investigation, Bradley told the woman that Malik was upset with his punishment and felt it had been too harsh, according to contemporaneous notes. The woman responded that she thought Malik should be feeling remorseful. Bradley also told the woman that "Jess told Abbas that he could have fired him for a number of reasons but isn’t going to. So he should consider himself lucky,” according to the resignation letter that the woman sent to Gillibrand, Fassler, and Castaldo.

The woman confronted Fassler and Bradley about why they didn't fire Malik if there were already multiple reasons for doing so. "'You could also be fired at any minute, for any reason,'" Fassler replied, according to the woman's resignation letter.

After the woman alleged that Malik had retaliated against her for reporting him for sexual harassment, Bradley also accidentally sent the woman an email intended for Fassler. “I get the impression she is trying to divide and concur [sic]. After today, neither of us should meet with her alone,” Bradley wrote, mistakenly believing that the woman had gone to Fassler alone with her complaint.

Bradley briefly left Gillibrand’s office for another job last August, before the woman decided to resign. The woman did not send Bradley the resignation letter and Bradley returned to Gillibrand’s office months later.

The woman did not put the blame solely on Bradley either. In a statement to POLITICO, she pointed the finger at Gillibrand herself. “She kept a harasser on her staff until it proved politically untenable for her to do so,” she said.