Cuomo ally facing defamation suit
JCOPE commissioner files complaint against attorney Rita Glavin
A commissioner for the state’s embattled ethics panel, which is scheduled to be shut down and replaced in a few weeks, is suing former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s attorney, accusing her of defamation for publicly alleging he leaked confidential information to the press.
The complaint was filed recently in state Supreme Court in Onondaga County by Gary J. Lavine, a commissioner with the Joint Commission on Public Ethics. He alleges Rita M. Glavin, Cuomo’s attorney, defamed him in an April 1 letter she sent to the state inspector general’s office accusing him of leaking confidential information about Cuomo’s dealings with the ethics panel.
“I want my name cleared,” Lavine said Tuesday when contacted about his lawsuit. The petition claims Glavin publicly filed the leak accusation to gain an “improper advantage” in Cuomo’s litigation against the ethics commission as well as to intimidate Lavine from performing his duties as a member of the panel.
Glavin, who has waged a fierce battle seeking to clear Cuomo’s reputation in the wake of his resignation in August, cast the lawsuit filed by Lavine as “in a word, frivolous, and nothing more than a stunt.”
Glavin filed a civil complaint against the ethics commission on the same day she sent the complaint to the inspector general’s office. The lawsuit filed by Glavin is challenging the commission’s efforts to make Cuomo return more than $5 million in proceeds from a book about his administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. In that case, which is pending in state Supreme Court in Albany, the commission’s attorney, Benjamin A. Fleming, recently filed a response assailing Glavin’s claims that the panel’s resolutions ordering Cuomo to return his book payments were issued improperly.
“(Cuomo) does not deny that he remains in violation of JCOPE’S rules; he has failed to obtain JCOPE approval, as required, to engage in outside activity (authoring and profiting from a book) while he was a statewide official,” Fleming wrote. “(Cuomo) never sought relief from the Disgorgement Order . ... He simply refused to comply with it, and tossed out inflammatory public statements as a dodge. Now that his noncompliance has been placed at issue before the court, (he) has responded with yet more invective, both in and out of his legal papers. But there is no bite behind his ill-considered bark.”
Fleming argued that Cuomo’s challenge of the disgorgement order is insufficient and not supported by law and that his motion to dismiss the the commission’s counterclaims “misinterprets the sweep of JCOPE’S statutory authority.”
The legal battles have unfolded as Glavin has filed complaints to various authorities about alleged leaks of confidential information regarding Cuomo, including accusing Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple of disclosing grand jury information regarding the nowdropped criminal case in which the former governor was accused of touching the breast of a female aide.
The skirmishes have unfolded against a backdrop in which Cuomo has resumed speaking at public events on matters ranging from gun violence to those he says are “woke” and “extremist” Democrats who subjected him to “cancel culture” attacks that derailed his political career. He resigned in the midst of his third term as governor in August, weeks after a state attorney general’s report concluded he had sexually harassed or acted inappropriately with multiple women — allegations that
Cuomo denies.
The former governor also has faced scrutiny for his administration’s misleading data on the number of nursing home residents who died due to COVID -19, and for the book deal that has spurred investigations into whether the state employees who assisted him with researching, writing and publishing the book were doing so as “volunteers.”
The commission alleges Cuomo made multiple misrepresentations and omissions when he sought and obtained JCOPE’S approval two years ago to profit from a book detailing his administration’s handling of the early stages of the pandemic.
In the six-page complaint that Glavin filed with the inspector general’s office in April, she asserted that “confidentiality breaches have prejudiced Gov. Cuomo’s privacy rights and compromised the independence of the JCOPE commissioners and staff by exerting public pressure on them.” She added that on “numerous occasions” between August and March, news outlets published stories about the commission’s “plans, decisions, thought processes, and information” relating to its deliberations and resolutions calling for Cuomo to return his book proceeds.
Cuomo disputes that he misused government resources to produce the book.
In comments two months ago, Lavine denied disclosing confidential information from the ethics panel’s deliberations or investigations.
“Cuomo acknowledged publicly that his staff had worked on writing, editing and advancing the publication of the book. There was nothing confidential about it at all,” Lavine said. “The original opinion that he got from (a commission staff member) would have been confidential, but he divulged it publicly. Once it’s in the public domain, it’s not confidential anymore.”