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.”
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.
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