Gov's ghost writers
Cuo used top aides to help with $4M memoir
New details emerged Wednesday about Gov. Cuomo’s pandemic memoir, including how he enlisted government staffers to help with the book — for which he was offered more than $4 million, according to a new report.
Top aides Melissa DeRosa and Stephanie Benton, as well as junior staffers, assisted the governor with drafts of “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic,” which was published in mid-October, The New York Times reported.
The governor’s book deal — which came as he was riding high in popularity due to his nationally televised coronavirus briefings — ended with a $4 million offer, the Times reported.
Crown Publishing has since paused promotion of “American Crisis” because of a federal investigation into the Cuomo administration’s handling of COVID-19 in nursing homes.
Early last summer, while DeRosa was helping to edit early drafts and attending video meetings with publishers, she and other top aides were worried about an impending state Department of Health report about the virus’ toll on nursing homes, according to the Times.
The DOH report threatened to reveal a far higher number of nursing-home deaths from COVID than had previously been made public by the administration.
Cuomo’s office later admitted that it removed the higher death toll from early drafts of the report, which was issued on July 6. The tally published in the report omitted thousands of nursinghome residents who died in hospitals of COVID.
Cuomo had already begun working on his book detailing his response to the pandemic as early as mid-June, the Times reported, citing e-mails and an early draft of the tome.
Staffers were reportedly helping with the manuscript by late June and early July — a potential violation of state laws that prohibit the use of public resources for personal gain.
A state ethics agency gave Cuomo permission last July to write the book — but specifically told him not to use state “personnel” or property “for activities associated with the book,” The Buffalo News reported.
That revelation came after the Times report, which detailed how Benton, for instance, twice asked assistants to print parts of the draft and deliver them to Cuomo at the Executive Mansion in Albany.
One of the requests, on July 5, involved a 224-page draft with edits from DeRosa, the report said.
The draft on which DeRosa worked didn’t include any mention of the DOH report or its findings, but did have a searing indictment of Mayor de Blasio, according to the Times.
Cuomo wrote that his political foe had “very little interest or aptitude for government policy or governmental operations.”
The governor also slammed de Blasio as being “viewed as one of the worst mayors in modern history,” who suffers from “obvious, ego-driven narcissism.”
De Blasio spokesman Bill Neidhardt told the Times: “Andrew Cuomo writing about ego-driven narcissism sounds like the pot calling the kettle black.”
Senior Cuomo adviser Rich Azzopardi denied to the Times any connection between the book and the DOH report.
He also said DeRosa and Benton had “volunteered on this project,” something he added was “permissible and consistent with ethical requirements” of the state.