Friday, April 01, 2022

1 April 2022: Cuomo Sues JCOPE in Bid To Keep $5M Book Deal Profits

Cuomo sues Albany ethics commission in attempt to keep $5M book profits

Andrew M. Cuomo sued New York's Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) in a bid to keep the $5.2 million he gained from his pandemic "leadership" book deal. That follows the 19 March 2022 vote JCOPE's commissioners had to order Cuomo to repay the publisher after revoking the permission a lower level staff member granted to Cuomo back in June 2020. Negotiations for Cuomo's book had begun as early as 19 March 2020.

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo hit Albany’s ethics watchdog with a lawsuit Friday, accusing it of “extraordinary bias” against him as he seeks to hold onto proceeds from his $5.1 million book deal.

The Joint Commission on Public Ethics voted overwhelmingly in November to rescind its decision that allowed Cuomo to write “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic,” arguing state resources were used to write the book, which it said contained “serial omissions and misrepresentations” about New York’s pandemic response.

Cuomo’s lawyers argued that he complied with JCOPE’s original parameters for writing the book and asked the state supreme court to overrule the agency’s decision and allow him to keep the millions he earned from the book.

The former governor claimed that staff members who worked on the book did so on their own time, and said the agency’s ruling amounted to “flagrant violations of the due process rights secured to him by the United States Constitution.”

“Simply stated, never in the history of New York State has an agency so breathtakingly and irresponsibly prejudged a matter on which it is the final decisionmaker,” the lawsuit filed in Albany County claimed.

Here is background on Andrew M. Cuomo's pandemic "leadership" book deal from the timeline:

We think its funny that April Fool's Day figures so prominently in Andrew M. Cuomo's pandemic "leadership" book deal scandal.

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