NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- The ethics commission tasked with monitoring New York public officials ordered former Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Friday to return the $5 million he made from his self-congratulatory book ‘American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
An investigation by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics found Cuomo used state employees to assist in writing the book and ordered he return the profits to his publisher — Penguin/Random House, according to the New York Post.
JCOPE has broad authority to impose civil penalties for the ethics violations of public officials.
The commission originally approved Cuomo’s book on the condition that he not use state resources to produce it. The investigation found the disgraced former governor violated that condition by using state workers to assist in publishing.
JCOPE issued a similar order in December that was shot down by Attorney General Letitia James who believed the agency had not held a thorough enough hearing.
The new order delegates enforcement to a special counsel instead of James in order to avoid another spat.
Cuomo’s book, an autobiographical victory lap for his handling of the pandemic, was released in October 2020 — two months after the first coronavirus wave had tapered out in New York City and two months before the next wave started to pick up.
The former governor made clear he has no intention of returning the cash.
“Another day, another display of incompetence by J-Joke’s kangaroo court,” Cuomo’s spokesperson Richard Azzopardi told the Post. “We’ll see them in real court.”
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