Turn the page: Cuomo’s book broke the rules, and JCOPE never should’ve approved it

Writing a COVID memoir wasn’t Andrew Cuomo’s idea. On March 19, 2020, two-and-a-half weeks after he began his famous daily TV briefings on what we then called coronavirus, captivating the city, state and nation, a Penguin Random House book editor called Cuomo’s literary agent, D.C. lawyer Bob Barnett.

Thus begins the timeline in the outside investigation report on how the now-dead state Joint Commission on Public Ethics authorized the book for the now-resigned governor. The book never should have been written and it never should have been approved.

Enticed by the prospect of making millions, Cuomo then penned the book. Under the rules, it was supposed to be done on his own time, not the state’s, and same for those government employees who helped him. But in those months of 2020, there was no “free time” for Cuomo and his aides; trying to manage the COVID emergency was a 25-hour-a-day task. The rules for outside income also required that “the subject matter was sufficiently unrelated to his job responsibilities.” But it was a book about how he handled COVID.

On July 10, Cuomo said on the radio: “I am now thinking about writing a book about what we went through, lessons learned, the entire experience because if we don’t learn from this then it will really compound the whole crisis that we’ve gone through.” That same day, he asked JCOPE for permission.

But he was more than thinking. The book was already written. The $5.1 million contract was agreed to on July 15, with delivery of the complete manuscript due on July 17. That was the day that JCOPE, unaware of any of the details and focused on if Penguin Random House had state business, said yes.

JCOPE meekly asked to see the contract. Cuomo’s camp refused, saying JCOPE could leak. In fact, JCOPE did leak in 2019 when Cuomo learned about a secret vote.

The memoir broke the rules by using state resources on a subject of state concern. The book has closed on both JCOPE and Cuomo.