NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Gov. Andrew Cuomo was offered more than $4 million for his memoir about his administration's handling of the COVID-19 crisis, according to a new report.
The bidding process for "American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic" "ended with a high offer of more than $4 million," the New York Times reported Wednesday night.
The book was released in October, months before Cuomo came to face a slew of sexual harassment allegations, as well as a probe into his administration's counting of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes.
The Times on Wednesday reported that the state's nursing home COVID-19 death toll was "removed from the final version" of a Health Department report at the behest of Cuomo's top aides — including Melissa DeRosa — as Cuomo was "on the brink" of securing the book deal.
Cuomo senior adviser Rich Azzopardi, however, told the outlet the report and the book deal were unrelated to one another.
"There is no connection between the report and this outside project, period," he said. "And any suggestion otherwise is just wrong."
The Times also reported that the governor recruited staffers to help him with the book. DeRosa, for one, "attended video meetings with publishers, and helped him edit early drafts of the book," according to the outlet.
