10 April 2021: A Direct Line of Connected Dots in Governor Cuomo's Scandals

Cuomo and the bloat

Yesterday, we featured two opinion pieces whose authors don't want to see Governor Cuomo impeached. Today, we featuring just one opinion piece, by the Albany Times-Union's Fred LeBrun, who does want to see Cuomo impeached:

The debacle of the great book deal has jumped to the front of the line, right next to a regiment of women claiming sexual harassment. We’ve learned a number of staffers, state workers all, worked on the book perhaps as volunteers but probably not, at the same time a critical state Department of Health report on nursing home deaths by COVID-19 was being edited and seriously sanitized by some of the same folks working on the book.

A major premise of the bestseller “American Crisis” is that Cuomo did a swell job getting us through the darkest times and, among other things, kept deaths in nursing homes down. Which is not what the original numbers in the Health Department report showed, but implicitly did in the revised version.

There’s a direct line of connected dots between the governor with a motive, a $4 million-plus book deal with Crown Publishing, a number of Cuomo staff working on the book on state time, possibly in violation of state law, and an edited version of an official state document related to thousands of deaths in nursing homes being made to conform to the premise of the book.

If this is not impeachment territory not to mention hubris of the first order, I would be surprised. That the Assembly would move very slowly on this, however, would surprise me less.

It has otherwise been a quiet day in Cuomoland. How long can that last?