ALBANY, N.Y. — As its final action before being disbanded, New York’s much-maligned ethics panel voted Friday to release an outside report detailing its approval of a $5.1 million book deal for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
In a 10-1 vote, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics moved to make public a report written by the law firm Hogan Lovells that found Cuomo “is at fault for misleading JCOPE” and the commission “should have recognized the potential ethical issues arising” from the deal.
According to the report, Cuomo’s office “exerted pressure on JCOPE to expedite the approval of the request” of the book, titled “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic,” which was published by Penguin Random House in 2020 at the height of the crisis.
