We're consolidating editorial and opinion coverage on JCOPE's vote to claw back the up-to-$5.2 million the resigned-in-disgrace former New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo stood to personally gain from his pandemic "leadership" book deal in this timeline entry.
- Bombshell Cuomo book decision is proof nobody in Albany fears him anymore: Goodwin
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The New York Post's Michael Goodwin speculates on what JCOPE's vote ordering Cuomo to give up all the proceeds from his pandemic "leadership" book really represents:
The news from Albany is not only a bombshell, it’s also bursting with symbolism. With the demand that Andrew Cuomo forfeit the millions he was paid for his book on COVID leadership, the state is declaring the end of a long nightmare.
Now it’s official: Nobody in New York politics is afraid of Andrew Cuomo anymore. His era of dominance and fear is finished.
Forever.
If that sounds obvious, consider that even after Cuomo resigned as governor in disgrace, there were reports he was plotting a comeback. One rumor had him running for his old office in the gubernatorial primary next June.
Another had him running for attorney general next year. The implication was that, if he won, he would use the AG job as a stepping stone to be governor, just as he did before.
One of his lawyers even cited the “widespread speculation” of a comeback as a reason why Letitia James, then the AG and briefly a gubernatorial candidate, should recuse herself from investigating Cuomo....
The 12-1 vote by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics settles the issue. Nothing says we’re not afraid of you anymore like a bipartisan demand for as much as $5.1 million — in 30 days!
As Goodwin notes later in his analysis, with James' decision to seek re-election as New York's state attorney general rather than run for governor, Andrew M. Cuomo's legal and PR team lost the main argument they had to forestall criminal investigations and any prosecutions by her office. Following so soon afterward, the JCOPE vote symbolically confirms the extent to which Cuomo's political hold over Albany has diminished.
- Cuomo’s epilogue: The laughable state ethics commission issues an overreaching order demanding the former governor return $5 million
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Meanwhile, the editors of the New York Daily News are of the opinion that like JCOPE itself, the state ethics watchdog's order to Cuomo to give up his pandemic "leadership" book deal millions is a joke. Since it's so short, we've excerpted the full editorial:
We are all for Andrew Cuomo disgorging the $5.2 million advance from his cursed COVID memoir. The book was a terrible idea for him to write while he was governor, still battling the virus (and not much of a read, either). Like his previous try at becoming an author, it bombed, with sales so weak that the publisher took a deep bath.
The book was also written under an ethics permission that the watchdog now says was both improperly obtained and not honored. It’s bad all around and it shows that when the publisher called Cuomo in the first weeks of COVID, he should have said that he was busy and didn’t have time.
We don’t know how permission was obtained from the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE), but if the terms of the arrangement weren’t followed — most importantly, that no government employee on the clock could participate in the book’s production — Cuomo, as the responsible party, should be at fault. As to any sanction for such a breach, it depends on what the law and rules allow for a person no longer in state employ. Ethically speaking, repaying the treasury for labor pilfered, plus a penalty, would be in order.
But JCOPE ordering a relinquishment (to the state attorney general) of the full $5.2 million advance that the publisher stupidly pledged to the governor is quite a stretch. JCOPE, flaccid by design — Cuomo’s design — is using as its justification that its permission was retroactively revoked last month and that Cuomo never reapplied. Therefore, goes their cockamamie logic, it’s like he never had the okay in the first place. Cuomo’s lawyer’s laughing retort seems about right here.
The editors have put their finger on why Andrew M. Cuomo's legal and PR team will be heading to the courts rather than pushing Cuomo to write the check.
