CNN Host Chris Cuomo Accused Of Sexual Harassment, Allegedly Grabbed Ex-Boss' Butt At Party

She claims Cuomo grabbed her butt at a New York City bar in 2005, in front of their work colleagues and her husband.

Ross says she was an executive producer of an ABC entertainment show at the time but had been Cuomo's boss on Primetime Live.

“I was at the party with my husband, who sat behind me on an ottoman sipping his Diet Coke as I spoke with work friends. When Mr. Cuomo entered the Upper West Side bar, he walked toward me and greeted me with a strong bear hug while lowering one hand to firmly grab and squeeze the cheek of my buttock,” she detailed in the op-ed.

Ross claims Cuomo acknowledged what he was allegedly doing at the time of the butt grab.

“’I can do this now that you’re no longer my boss,’” he reportedly said to her. “’No you can’t,’” I said, pushing him off me at the chest while stepping back, revealing my husband, who had seen the entire episode at close range. We quickly left.”

While he may have had an arrogance about him during the alleged butt grab, he later emailed her with an apology that had a cocky subject line.

"Now that I think of it … I am ashamed,” read the email dated June 1, 2005.

He randomly compared his greeting to actor Christian Slater, who had been arrested that year for sexual harassment after grabbing the butt of a woman in New York City. His charges were later dropped.

“Though my hearty greeting was a function of being glad to see you … Christian Slater got arrested for a (kind of) similar act (though borne of an alleged negative intent, unlike my own) … and as a husband I can empathize with not liking to see my wife patted as such,” Cuomo wrote in the email.

Apologizing first to her husband, Cuomo followed up by also expressed his regret to Ross.

“So pass along my apology to your very good and noble husband … and I apologize to you as well, for ever putting you in such a position," the television host added. “Next time, I will remember the lesson, no matter how happy I am to see you.”

In her op-ed, Ross questions whether Cuomo apologized because her husband saw the alleged incident.

“Mr. Cuomo may say this is a sincere apology. I’ve always seen it as an attempt to provide himself with legal and moral coverage to evade accountability,” she wrote. "I never thought that Mr. Cuomo’s behavior was sexual in nature. Whether he understood it at the time or not, his form of sexual harassment was a hostile act meant to diminish and belittle his female former boss in front of the staff.”

Cuomo acknowledged the incident, responding to Ross' op-ed by stating, “As Shelley acknowledges, our interaction was not sexual in nature. It happened 16 years ago in a public setting when she was a top executive at ABC. I apologized to her then, and I meant it.”