Assemblyman Pat Burke (D-Buffalo) repeatedly made lewd comments about women — even slobbering over his own son’s underage girlfriends after seeing sex tapes his offspring made of the encounters on social media, according to a shocking harassment complaint.
Burke’s former legislative director, Nicole Golias — one of a trio of staffers fired last year amid internal controversy over the lawmaker’s response to the Buffalo supermarket mass shooting — filed the claim April 1 with the New York Division of Human Rights.
According to Golias, the 38-year-old Burke “made comments about his son’s sexual encounters after viewing some of his son’s video tapes.
“He said the girls in the videos were ‘hot and it didn’t matter that they were under aged [sic],'” adds the complaint, first reported by the Buffalo News. “He said, ‘if she has big boobs, a size zero waist and a huge ass, she’s hot.'”
Elsewhere in the complaint, Golias says Burke called himself a “colonizer” and said he had “control and dominion over his wife because he is Caucasian and his wife is Puerto Rican.”
The former staffer, who worked for Burke for less than a year before her dismissal, also claimed the assemblyman “had conversations with my male co-workers about the genitals of the man I was dating.”
A former staffer to Assemblyman Pat Burke has accused him of sexual harassment. Pat Burke/Twitter“He would do anything he could to appear cool and attractive,” Golias told the Buffalo News, which reported that the Assembly is investigating the matter. “And I don’t know if he was trying to convince others or himself. But it ended up just veering into entirely inappropriate behavior.”
Burke responded Friday, telling The Post that the allegations are “extremely upsetting.”
“You’re talking about people who lack credibility. There’s very clear, ample evidence that they lack credibility. In the end, there’s no evidence other than what they’re saying, that I carried on this way,” he said, alleging Golias and his former community relations director Matt Dearing were the ones who created an unprofessional work environment.
“This is just [the] latest action by them for revenge for being caught,” Burke added. “The accusations are outrageous and salacious. That they bring my child into this, attempting to cause harm, is extremely upsetting.”
Late Friday, Burke provided documents to The Post that purportedly show the fired employees making ribald jokes of their own, including on official Assembly stationery.
The authenticity of those documents and who made them could not be immediately verified.
A former staffer claims Burke, 38, made lewd comments about women on multiple occasions — even slobbering over his own son’s underage girlfriends. Pat Burke/FacebookAssembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations, which follow accusations of sexual misconduct against Assemblyman Juan Ardila (D-Queens), which he too has denied.
“It seems to be endemic to Albany and it’s uncomfortable and pretty disgusting,” a Democratic Assembly member told The Post about the Burke accusations.
Dearing, who is running for local office, told The Post that he witnessed much of the behavior alleged by Golias, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In one incident last year, Dearing claimed, Burke stated that a local party official’s sister wanted to sleep with him.
“Somebody was like, ‘How do you even know that?'” he recalled. “And he was like, ‘Every time she sees me, she puts her boobs up against me.’ We were like, ‘What are you even talking about?’
“And Pat said to Nicole, like, ‘Oh, come on, Nicole, you’ve like never done that to a guy before?'”
Burke, who acknowledges he is a “casual” boss, has denied the claims. Pat Burke/Facebook“He was a bartender before he ever got elected,” Dearing added of Burke. “That’s not a shade on bartenders, by any means. But I think he came from a particular environment culturally where those sorts of comments were OK and he doesn’t know how to turn it off in settings where people aren’t OK with that.”
Dearing said he met Burke at a local bar and that their relationship in some respects remained unchanged even after he became an official legislative employee.
“Guy gave me a joint my like third day working there,” Dearing said.
Burke — who describes himself as a “casual” boss — said Friday he did not recall doing any such thing, and flatly denied a separate claim that he upped the ante by bringing psychedelic mushrooms into the workplace as well.
“The thing I remember was him telling us that he brought them in then,” Dearing said.
Bure was one of the first Democrats to call for ex-Gov. Cuomo to step down amid harassment allegations. APDearing, Golias and a third staffer say they were sacked after raising objections to Burke’s response to the hate-fueled Tops supermarket shooting on May 14 of last year that left 10 black patrons dead.
“We tried to say, ‘Hey, man, you know, we live in this part of Buffalo that people regard as being racist, and we know we have an extremism and a racism problem here in Erie County, and we feel that … as an office, we got to call this out,’” Dearing told The Post at the time.
“He said, ‘No — stick to the program!’”
Golias told The Post at the time that Burke even made “fun of” a colleague who wanted to form a “hokey” commission on combating white supremacy.
“They’re lying,” Burke said of that alleged episode.
Burke did speak at the state Capitol three days after the shooting about how the supermarket gunman “killed black people indiscriminately” while sparing a white customer.
“White supremacy, right-wing extremism are entering our institutions all across this nation, and if you don’t think it’s happening in this state, it’s happening in this state too,” he said at the time.
Dearing said the sexual harassment complaint marks an ironic turn for Burke, who was among the first Democrats to call for disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo to step down amid accusations of sexual misconduct. Cuomo has denied wrongdoing, but resigned in August 2021.
“In Pat’s office, it was just generally unprofessional,” Dearing said Friday. “I mean, it was casual, but sometimes you’re driving past the point of unprofessional to inappropriate categorically.”






