New York (LifeSiteNews) – The Empire State’s top ethics commission has ordered former Democratic Governor and Biden ally Andrew Cuomo to repay millions of dollars to the state.
The Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) said Cuomo must pay back $5.1 million in profits from his October 2020 book American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.
JCOPE revoked its prior permission for him to write the book because it said he violated his promise not to use state resources for the publication.
The commission’s December 14 decision said Cuomo must “no later than 30 days [from December 14]…pay over to the Attorney General of the State of New York,” the profits from the book, which amounted to $5.1 million.
The New York Post reported that it remains questionable if Cuomo will be forced to turn over the profits. He put some of the profits into a trust for his daughters and donated some to the United Way.
“JCOPE has exactly zero authority to issue an order such as this,” David Grandeau, a former executive director of the ethics commission said. “All it [the law] says is JCOPE has the right to issue opinions and opinions are like a–holes, and in JCOPE’s case, there’s 13 of them. There’s just no authority to issue it.”
“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,” Jim McGuire, counsel to the former Governor, said in a statement to the New York Post. “Should they seek to enforce this action, we’ll see them in court.”
The ethics commission announcement is the latest bad news for the pro-abortion former governor, who resigned after a lengthy report detailing his history of allegations of sexual misconduct.
His mishandling of the COVID outbreak has also landed him in hot water.
For example, his administration admitted to falsifying nursing home deaths in order not to attract political criticism from conservatives. A report from New York lawmakers, released in November, said “former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his senior aides edited state COVID-19 reports and undercounted nursing home deaths while using state resources to help Cuomo land a $5 million book deal,” as LifeSiteNews previously reported.
Against the recommendations of health experts, then-Gov. Cuomo memorably directed nursing homes to take back patients after hospitalization for coronavirus in the early weeks of the pandemic. The move has been credited with significantly exacerbating COVID deaths among the elderly in New York, where over 15,000 nursing home residents have died of the virus – more than in any other state.
The policy has drawn criticism from both Democrats and Republicans who lost loved ones due to the policy.
Democratic state Assemblyman Ron Kim recently said Cuomo should face criminal charges over the policy that led to the death of Kim’s uncle.
“It’s criminal, there’s no other way to describe it,” Kim told Fox News. He said Cuomo committed “fraud” when he used “[his] platform to promote wrong information to sell books.”
It's official: Joe Biden has announced that his Administration will be forcing COVID vaccinations on nearly 1/3rd of American citizens, blatantly disregarding the personal objections of millions of people and moving America ever closer towards a medical dictatorship.
We cannot stand for this unprecedented overreach, and we will not submit to Biden's tyrannical public coercion efforts.
Please SIGN this urgent petition informing the President that you will NOT comply with these unconstitutional vaccine mandate orders issued by the Biden Administration, and that elected officials should act in their capacity to block these intrusive demands.
On Thursday, September 9th, Joe Biden announced the latest round of federal orders meant to further coerce large swaths of the public into getting the COVID vaccine -- many against their will.
While the legal standing of these measures is, at best, dubious, the Biden Administration appears more ready than ever to gut our individual rights and practically erase medical autonomy in our country.
This latest escalation in overreach was announced via a televised speech in which Biden outlined a new "six-point plan" that includes far more than just six avenues to achieve mass medical compliance.
Among the most egregious new federal mandates are the following:
- A requirement that all private businesses employing more than 100 people mandate their workers get the Covid-19 vaccine or submit to weekly testing (to be implemented by way of a new Department of Labor rule)
- A requirement that all federal employees and federal contractors get the COVID vaccine
- A requirement that all healthcare workers in facilities that receive reimbursement from Medicare and/or Medicaid (an estimated 17 million) get the Covid-19 vaccine without an alternative testing option
- A requirement that all Head Start teachers get the COVID vaccine
- A federal effort to lobby states to implement vaccine mandates for all school employees, and require regular testing of all students and school staff
- A federal effort to lobby entertainment venues to require proof of vaccination or testing in order to grant entry to the public
- A continuation of mask mandates on all federal properties and during interstate travel (i.e. planes, trains, buses)
All in all, these new vaccine mandates, which will go into effect within the coming weeks, will affect an estimated 100 million American workers -- 2/3rds of the entire workforce!
And, according to an administration official, violations of these unconstitutional requirements could result in fines of up to $14,000.
While this is clearly a political ploy on the part of the Joe Biden and his team of power-hungry Washington insiders to shift the focus from their disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the American public knows better: After nearly a year and a half's worth of arbitrary, ever-changing, and unconstitutional government mandates in response to the COVID outbreak, it was always a given that the Biden Administration would ramp things up even further when it behooved them.
And now, it would seem that time has officially come.
"This is not about freedom or personal choice," Biden uttered in his remarks, confirming his administration's blatant dismissal of all Americans' right(s) to accept or decline the experimental Covid-19 vaccine.
This is a stunning reversal from Biden's declaration last December that "I don’t think [the vaccine] should be mandatory, I wouldn’t demand it to be mandatory."
In fact, Biden even confirmed his intention to flout states' rights in the process, warning that "If these governors won’t help us beat the pandemic I’ll use my power as president to get them out of the way."
These are not the words of an "empathetic" leader; these are the words of an aspiring dictator. And, for the time being, the only way to stop Joe Biden's tyranny is through mass noncompliance.
As we've said from the beginning, science, basic logic, and common sense should dictate policy regarding COVID and the Delta variant.
But Joe Biden and the federal government have long abandoned those principles throughout this crisis, culminating into this disturbing yet inevitable flurry of intrusive vaccine mandates that use people's jobs, individual autonomy, and livelihood as leverage.
This assault on our individual rights, private businesses, and American workers cannot be tolerated, and the easiest way to combat these unlawful orders is to just say NO.
Please SIGN and SHARE this most important petition letting Joe Biden know that you will NOT comply with the unconstitutional medical demands being made by this administration, and that action should be taken to block any intrusive action against working Americans and private employers.
Thank you!
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
'Biden announces vaccine requirements for private businesses, impacting tens of millions of Americans': https://www.
Fox News meteorologist Janice Dean lost her mother-in-law and father-in-law to Cuomo’s nursing home policy and has been a consistently vocal critic of the former governor.
She retweeted a Democratic state senator who praised the decision for holding Cuomo accountable.
This is a step towards actual accountability. Cuomo will be forced to return the money he made off of lies, back to New York State.
This book deal shouldn’t have been approved in the first place, and I plan to ensure that it can’t happen again. https://t.co/Xy667iGo4q
— Alessandra Biaggi (@SenatorBiaggi) December 14, 2021
“This is a step towards actual accountability. Cuomo will be forced to return the money he made off of lies, back to New York State,” Alessandra Biaggi wrote.
“This book deal shouldn’t have been approved in the first place, and I plan to ensure that it can’t happen again,” the Republican state senator said.
RELATED:
Bombshell investigation finds Cuomo ‘revised’ COVID reports to minimize nursing home deaths
BREAKING: Pro-abortion NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigns amid sexual harassment claims
CNN suspends Chris Cuomo indefinitely after learning of efforts to help embattled brother