By DAVID BAUD­ER and MICHELLE L. PRICE, As­so­ci­at­ed Press

NEW YORK (AP) — CNN fired an­chor Chris Cuo­mo on Sat­ur­day less than a week af­ter new in­for­ma­tion emerged about how he as­sist­ed his broth­er, for­mer New York Gov. An­drew Cuo­mo, as the politi­cian faced sex­u­al ha­rass­ment al­le­ga­tions ear­li­er this year.

The net­work had sus­pend­ed its prime-time host on Tues­day to in­ves­ti­gate his con­duct, af­ter New York’s at­tor­ney gen­er­al re­leased de­tails show­ing he was more in­volved than pre­vi­ous­ly known in help­ing to strate­gize and reach out to oth­er jour­nal­ists as his broth­er fought to keep his job.

CNN hired a law firm for that re­view, which it would not iden­ti­fy. The lawyers rec­om­mend­ed Chris Cuo­mo’s ter­mi­na­tion and CNN chief Jeff Zuck­er in­formed the an­chor of the de­ci­sion on Sat­ur­day.

“It goes with­out say­ing that these de­ci­sions are not easy, and there are a lot of com­plex fac­tors in­volved,” Zuck­er said in an email to CNN staff on Sat­ur­day.

The net­work said that “while in the process of that re­view, ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion has come to light.” CNN would not dis­cuss that in­for­ma­tion or char­ac­ter­ize whether it had any­thing to do with his broth­er.

Cuo­mo is­sued a state­ment on Twit­ter call­ing the de­ci­sion dis­ap­point­ing.

“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,” he said.

Even with the fir­ing, CNN said it will con­tin­ue to in­ves­ti­gate Cuo­mo’s con­duct “as ap­pro­pri­ate.”

FILE - CNN correspondent Chris Cuomo during on air report in front of the Time Warner Building, where NYPD personnel removed an explosive device Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, in New York. CNN fired Cuomo for the role he played in defense of his brother, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, as he fought sexual harassment charges. CNN said Saturday, Dec. 4, 2021, it was still investigating but additional information had come to light. (AP Photo/Kevin Hagen, File)

A year ago the two sons of the late New York Gov. Mario Cuo­mo were fly­ing high: An­drew as a three-term gov­er­nor praised ini­tial­ly in many cir­cles for his han­dling of the pan­dem­ic, Chris as the top-rat­ed per­son­al­i­ty on CNN. Now they’re both out of work.

As women came for­ward ac­cus­ing for­mer Gov. An­drew Cuo­mo of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment, his broth­er, de­spite be­ing a CNN an­chor, pressed sources for in­for­ma­tion on the ac­cusers and re­port­ed back to the gov­er­nor’s staff on what he was learn­ing.

He was ac­tive in help­ing craft their re­sponse to the charges, ac­cord­ing to emails and a tran­script of his tes­ti­mo­ny to in­ves­ti­ga­tors work­ing for state At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Leti­tia James. Her of­fice found An­drew Cuo­mo sex­u­al­ly ha­rassed at least 11 women; the for­mer gov­er­nor re­signed in Au­gust to avoid a like­ly im­peach­ment tri­al.

Chris Cuo­mo and CNN have been un­der fire for months about their an­chor’s con­duct. When it first came to light in May that the an­chor had been talk­ing to his broth­er’s ad­vis­ers, the net­work ac­knowl­edged that he had bro­ken its rules but, as CNN said in a state­ment up­on his sus­pen­sion ear­li­er this week, “we al­so ap­pre­ci­at­ed the unique po­si­tion he was in and un­der­stood his need to put fam­i­ly first and job sec­ond.”

The tran­scripts re­leased by James this week re­vealed con­sid­er­ably more de­tail about Cuo­mo’s in­volve­ment — con­duct CNN ex­ec­u­tives ad­mit­ted was a sur­prise even to them.

While Cuo­mo has said he nev­er tried to in­flu­ence CNN’s own cov­er­age of his broth­er, he told in­ves­ti­ga­tors for James about his calls to oth­er jour­nal­ists to find out what in­for­ma­tion they had about some of his ac­cusers.

That seemed to con­flict with an on-air state­ment Cuo­mo gave on CNN fol­low­ing his broth­er’s res­ig­na­tion in Au­gust. Cuo­mo had said that “I nev­er made calls to the press about my broth­er’s sit­u­a­tion.”

Cuo­mo al­so said that he nev­er “at­tacked, nor en­cour­aged any­one to at­tack any woman who came for­ward” with ac­cu­sa­tions against his broth­er. Ac­cord­ing to email tran­scripts re­leased this week, Cuo­mo wrote to aides that “I have a lead” on one of the ac­cusers, al­though it was not clear what he meant.

Things moved quick­ly this week fol­low­ing the re­lease of the tran­scripts. CNN took him off the air on Tues­day and sus­pend­ed him in­def­i­nite­ly be­fore the fir­ing on Sat­ur­day.

It was clear­ly a painful de­ci­sion for Zuck­er, who in­stalled Cuo­mo as a morn­ing show host short­ly af­ter tak­ing over at CNN in 2013, then lat­er moved him to prime time. Un­til this week, he had backed Cuo­mo de­spite crit­i­cism. “Cuo­mo Prime Time” had been the net­work’s high­est-rat­ed show this year, air­ing at the 9 p.m. East­ern hour be­tween shows by An­der­son Coop­er and Don Lemon.

FILE - Chris Cuomo attends The Hollywood Reporter's annual Most Powerful People in Media cocktail reception on April 11, 2019, in New York. CNN fired Cuomo for the role he played in defense of his brother, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, as he fought sexual harassment charges. CNN said Saturday, Dec. 4, 2021, it was still investigating but additional information had come to light. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)

The fir­ing leaves a sig­nif­i­cant hole in the net­work’s sched­ule. One for­mer ri­val is be­com­ing a free agent soon: Bri­an Williams re­cent­ly an­nounced he was leav­ing MSNBC, where he had an­chored a night­ly news hour, when his con­tract ends with the end of the year.

There was al­ways a po­ten­tial of con­flict with one Cuo­mo broth­er as gov­er­nor and an­oth­er as a jour­nal­ist. But since Chris Cuo­mo joined CNN, it was al­ways made clear that he would not cov­er any­thing that in­volved his broth­er.

That changed with the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, when the gov­er­nor ap­peared on his broth­er’s show sev­er­al times, trad­ing fa­mil­ial ban­ter that en­ter­tained view­ers but raised eth­i­cal red flags. They were then halt­ed.

A vet­er­an TV ex­ec­u­tive, Shel­ley Ross, wrote a col­umn for The New York Times in Sep­tem­ber say­ing Chris Cuo­mo had groped her at a par­ty 16 years ago, when they both worked for ABC News. Cuo­mo told the news­pa­per that “I apol­o­gized to her then, and I meant it.”