8 July 2022: JCOPE's Final Report - Cuomo Wrongly Used State Resources for Pandemic "Leadership" Book

Report: Cuomo wrongly used state resources to promote book

New York's Joint Commission on Public Ethics' final report has dropped. In it, the disbanding commission states Andrew M. Cuomo wrongly used state government resources to produce and promote his pandemic "leadership" book, for which he personally pocketed over $5.1 million.

Here's an excerpt from the Associated Press' coverage of the story:

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo improperly used state resources for a book he received $5.1 million to write, according to a report by a law firm.

New York’s soon-to-be-disbanded ethics commission, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, voted Thursday to make the report public. It had sought the investigation by the law firm to learn more about how the book deal was approved and the role played by the commission itself.

The report says the ethics commission failed to assert itself as a watchdog agency against the governor and should have asked for more information from Cuomo’s office.

Cuomo had already written 70,000 words of what was expected to be an 80,000-word book before he submitted a request seeking approval by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics for the book in 2020.

That meant Cuomo wrote and publicized the book at a time when it interfered with his responsibilities as a governor leading the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the report said....

The report said the book raised several ethical issues, finding Cuomo “misused the power and authority of his office to create, market and promote for enormous personal profit.”

One interesting angle is that JCOPE acknowledges ethichal misconduct on the part of its own staff, who greenlighted the project without review by the commissioners after being 'coerced' by Cuomo.

The report was prepared by the law firm of Hogan Lovells, who JCOPE contracted with to investigate the commission staff's role. The report [archived version here] was posted in the Special Reports section of JCOPE's web site on 8 July 2022.