An inquiry revealed that the disgraced former governor of New York had coerced a government inspector into approving the publication of his contentious $5 million COVID biography.
Cuomo bullied the taxpayer-funded New York Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCPOE) into allowing him to publish American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 epidemic, according to an independent law firm probe whose results were leaked on Friday.
Lawyers discovered that Cuomo had almost completed the book—for which he received a $5 million advance—before asking the watchdog organization for permission to publish it in 2020.
In the 80,000-word memoir that describes Cuomo’s role as governor in overseeing the state’s reaction during the COVID outbreak, he had already written 70,000 words by the time he was forced to resign in August 2021 due to many sex abuse allegations.
According to Spectrum News1, the inquiry showed that the JCOPE failed to adequately examine Cuomo’s behaviour and failed to notice the potential “moral quandary” in authorizing the contract.
Instead of notifying the Executive Chamber what information it needed to submit in order to receive permission, the news source claimed that “rather than doing so, the Executive Chamber told JCOPE what information the Governor would supply, which was not much.”
The report’s findings also show how the then-administration Governor coerced the watchdog committee into approving the agreement without having the organization conduct a routine assessment of its conditions.
At a meeting on Thursday, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, which is now being demobilized, decided to make the report public.
A new commission will be established by lawmakers and New York Governor Kathy Hochul to regulate lobbying and ethical behavior in state government.
Cuomo’s use of public resources to assist him in writing the book is the subject of a separate investigation that is still ongoing.
The accusations brought against Cuomo by Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, have been refuted by Cuomo’s team.
He was hailed as a national hero—and a potential presidential candidate—at the time the book was published for the way he handled the COVID-19 outbreak and his daily briefings, which many New Yorkers found comforting.
Later, after he was accused of acting inappropriately against several women, Cuomo’s career came to an end.
He was also held accountable for many of the 15,000 COVID-related deaths in nursing homes in New York after he had the facilities take in COVID-positive patients at the onset of the pandemic.
According to a previous Associated Press article, Cuomo sued the state’s ethics committee in April after the JCOPE ordered him to turn up the proceeds from the lucrative book contract in December.
A contentious legal fight resulted from the ex-refusal. governor’s camp’s
Cuomo claimed that the oversight group had violated his constitutional rights in a case that was submitted to the state Supreme Court in Albany, according to the news source.
According to him, JCOPE had “extreme bias against him.”
At the time, a JCOPE representative declined to comment due to Cuomo’s anger.
JCOPE, which has the responsibility of exercising regulatory oversight over lobbyists and public servants, had approved Cuomo’s book contract in July 2020.
The former governor was given permission to write his book on the understanding that he wouldn’t make use of any public employees or resources.
According to the study, governmental staff and resources were employed during the book’s promotion and publication.
Despite the fact that Cuomo’s agents said they were working on their own time and not for the corporation, they nonetheless denied any wrongdoing.
According to a memo from Judith Mogul, a former special counsel in the governor’s office, no state funds were used to write the book, and any staff members who helped the former governor with it did so on their own time, the AP reported.
The report confirmed the governor’s office submitted everything needed by the commission for approval, according to Cuomo spokesperson Richard Azzopardi, according to the Associated Press.