A state ethics board on Tuesday ordered former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to give up the $5.1 million he was paid for his book on the pandemic — a move Cuomo’s lawyer vowed to fight.
In a 12-1 vote, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics gave Cuomo 30 days to pay the state attorney general’s office an amount equal to the money he was set to make from the book, titled “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
The board last month rescinded its prior authorization for Cuomo to write the book after determining he had violated an agreement not to use any state personnel or property in its production and had made numerous “material omissions and misrepresentations” about the project.
A lawyer for Cuomo, Jim McGuire, pledged on Tuesday to fight the latest move by the board.
“JCOPE’s actions today are unconstitutional, exceed its own authority and appear to be driven by political interests rather than the facts and the law,” McGuire said. “Should they seek to enforce this action, we’ll see them in court.”
The book deal was one of the subjects of the state Assembly Judiciary Committee’s impeachment investigation into Cuomo, which was already underway when he resigned amid numerous sexual harassment allegations in August. Cuomo has apologized for some of his behavior, but insisted that he had not intended to harass any of his accusers.
In a report released last month, the Judiciary Committee found that Cuomo had used state employees to help write, edit and promote his book, despite the ethics board’s declaration that “No state property, personnel or other resources may be utilized for activities associated with the book.”
“Our investigation evidences that the book was the product of significant work performed by executive chamber staff during a time of a global pandemic requiring an around-the-clock response,” the committee report said.
“Certain senior members of the former governor’s executive chamber and other senior New York State officials worked extensively on the book,” the report said, adding those “officials attended meetings with agents and publishers, transcribed and drafted portions of the book, coordinated the production and promotion of the book, and participated in working sessions to review and finalize the book.”
The report also said that “evidence obtained in our investigation demonstrates that junior members of the executive chamber worked on the book and that work was not voluntary.”
Cuomo has insisted that any work by state employees on the book was voluntary, while allowing that some minor work may have been “incidental.” His spokesman, Rich Azzopardi, said last month that “staff who volunteered took time off, evidencing that they were volunteering and not on state time. Any suggestion to the contrary is Assembly hype.”
Cuomo, who earned $225,000 a year as governor, may have problems paying the money back if his planned legal challenge fails. Azzopardi said in July that Cuomo had already been paid $3.1 million of the total $5.1 million he was due, and that $1.5 million of that money had gone to taxes.
Of the remaining $1.5 million he had at the time, Cuomo “donated a third to the United Way of New York State for state-wide COVID relief” and was putting the remainder of the money in a trust for his three daughters, Azzopardi said.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
