Monday, May 17, 2021

17 May 2021: Cuomo To Collect $5.12 Million from Pandemic Leadership Book Deal

Gov. Cuomo got $5.1M for COVID book despite nursing home deaths

Although Governor Cuomo could have addressed the controversy surrounding how much he was going to be paid for his pandemic "leadership" book months ago, it wasn't until 2020's tax filing deadline of May 17, 2021 arrived that he was legally required to disclose his income.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo — whose controversial directive for nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients has been tied to as many as 1,000-plus deaths — sold the rights to his best-selling pandemic memoir for $5.12 million, according to tax returns he made public on Monday.

The amount exceeds the $4 million-plus figure that was reportedly the top offer for Cuomo’s “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic,” which was published in mid-October as the public health crisis still raged in New York and elsewhere.

Cuomo’s contract — which he got despite his administration being accused of sending COVID-positive patients back into nursing homes, potentially spreading the deadly virus among the vulnerable elderly there — paid him $3.12 million last year and he was left with a little more than $3 million after editing expenses, according to his tax returns.

Left unanswered is the question of why Governor Cuomo had members of his staff, all state government employees, help write and promote the book from which he stood to personally profit so generously. New York Attorney General Letitia James is actively investigating whether Cuomo broke New York's Public Officers Law by doing so.

“Since the publisher was paying him $5 million, he could have bought a computer and printer and hired some staff instead of glomming state resources,” said Bill Hammond of the Empire Center for Public Policy, who has held the Cuomo administration’s feet to the fire over its handling of the nursing homes during the pandemic.

Indeed, he could even have been able to afford hiring professional writers to write and edit it. And yet, he chose to follow a different path, using state government employees instead, who were unpaid, unless you count their incomes as state government employees. Here's a sampling of previous coverage of Governor Cuomo's pandemic book scandal from the timeline:

Unsold Copies of Andrew Cuomo's Pandemic Leadership Book at Airport (May 2021)
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