Saturday, July 09, 2022

9 July 2022: Report - Ethics Commission Staff Bungled Cuomo's Book Approval

Report: Ethics commission staff bungled Cuomo's book approval

This report goes into greater detail on how Andrew M. Cuomo successfully "coerced" the staff of New York's Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) into approving his request make a deal to publish his pandemic "leadership" book, for which he would personally pocket $5.2 million.

Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo dictated the process by which his controversial 2020 book was approved while state ethics commission staff allowed misrepresentations to go unchecked, according to an internal report released Thursday.

The staff at the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics, charged with verifying that Cuomo's lucrative authorship followed state rules, were pressured into accepting demands by top Cuomo aides. And as "American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic" was rapidly greenlit, ethics commissioners questioning the process were denied key information, the report found.

The report was authored by the law firm Hogan Lovells, which was retained by the commission to examine what went wrong during the approval process and to gather lessons for the future. The decision to make public the firm's report — which had been confidential — was the last act of the commission, which ceased to exist as of Friday. A provision in April's state budget agreement replaced it with a new ethics body....

All state employees seeking to earn substantial outside income were required to receive approval from the ethics agency. The Hogan Lovells report concluded that during the approval process for Cuomo's book, "the Executive Chamber overpowered JCOPE, and JCOPE failed to assert itself as a watchdog agency against the governor."

"Rather than JCOPE telling the Executive Chamber what information it needed to provide in order to obtain approval, the Executive Chamber told JCOPE what information the governor would provide, which was not much," the report stated. "The Executive Chamber also successfully coerced JCOPE into expediting the approval and rushing through the process with very minimal due diligence."

The article goes into greater detail on the findings of the law firm's investigation, which faults the governor's deceptive tactics in getting the deal approved and also the commission's staff for failing their duty to serve the public's interest.

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

As of 9 July 2022, the state attorney general's criminal probe of Andrew M. Cuomo's book deal has made no visible progress since 5 April 2022.

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