Cuomo’s final chapter
THE news from Albany is not only a bombshell, it’s also bursting with symbolism. With the demand that Andrew Cuomo forfeit the millions he was paid for his book on COVID leadership, the state is declaring the end of a long nightmare.
Now it’s official: Nobody in New York politics is afraid of Andrew Cuomo anymore. His era of dominance and fear is finished. Forever.
If that sounds obvious, consider that even after Cuomo resigned as governor in disgrace, there were reports he was plotting a comeback. One rumor had him running for his old office in the gubernatorial primary next June.
Another had him running for attorney general next year. The implication was that, if he won, he would use the AG job as a stepping stone to be governor, just as he did before.
One of his lawyers even cited the “widespread speculation” of a comeback as a reason why Letitia James, the AG and briefly a gubernatorial candidate, should recuse herself from investigating Cuomo.
800-pound gorilla
The credibility of such rumors rested not on their sources but on the enormous shadow Cuomo had cast over Albany and, indeed, all of New York. He was the 800-pound gorilla who was headed for a fourth term and it was hard to get your hands around the idea that he really was gone and wasn’t coming back.
Many in the media also stepped gingerly, a caution that was understandable if not defensible. If Cuomo did make a successful return, woe to those who had crossed him. His reputation for merciless revenge was well deserved.
The 12-1 vote by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics settles the issue. Nothing says we’re not afraid of you anymore like a bipartisan demand for as much as $5.1 million — in 30 days!
Indeed, the ethics agency itself encapsulates the rise and fall of Cuomo.
He had approved its odd structure — it had appointees by the governor as well as by both parties and chambers in the Legislature — as a way to protect himself, and insiders duly leaked confidential votes to him. The idea that it was an effective anti-corruption tool was widely dismissed, with the agency’s handle of JCOPE derided as J-JOKE.
Cuomo’s control was so total that staff members, not the actual commissioners, secretly last year approved his book deal, an act that was later reversed and is now under investigation.
Yet it was during that secret approval that Cuomo made an expensive mistake by agreeing to routine terms that prohibited the use of government staff and resources for his outside gig. He clearly had no intention of abiding by those terms and almost certainly assumed he could get away with using multiple aides to work on the book, with some testifying they were assigned to help while on government time.
Some said they volunteered their time, though documents released suggest the word “volunteered” was flexible. For a period, it seems as if the entire executive chamber was working on the book — all while the pandemic raged and crime skyrocketed.
As Assembly investigators also recently revealed, the book contract was being negotiated at the very same time Cuomo’s crew was hiding from the public the true number of nursing-home deaths. An accurate count would have likely killed the publisher’s appetite for the book.
After all, what kind of COVID leadership is it if your state has the worst or near the worst record on fatal nursing-home cases?
A gut punch
In its Tuesday vote demanding that Cuomo forfeit all his income from the deal, JCOPE gave him another gut punch by ordering that he turn the money over to AG James, whose office conducted the probe that found he sexually harassed as many as 11 women, the finding that led to his August resignation.
As he does reflexively about any criticism, Cuomo, through a lawyer, called the JCOPE order politically motivated. It’s an ironic defense coming from a man who was the consummate political animal and indicative of the fact that he probably can’t imagine anyone in public life ever doing anything on the merits.
The lawyer, Jim McGuire, threatened that any attempts to enforce the collection order would end up in court.
That’s probably inevitable, and it will add another layer to the image of Cuomo tied up in lawsuits and tied down in investigations and thus no longer a political force. There is a strong chance he will face a criminal charge from his alleged groping of at least one former aide, Brittany Commisso, and it’s likely some or all of the other victims will file civil suits.
The feds, meanwhile, supposedly are investigating him on various issues, including whether the sexualharassment findings rise to the level of civil-rights violations.
And James is still said to be investigating the book deal as a possible criminal matter.
Cuomo’s legal team has been hammering her for months, but lost one of its main arguments when she decided not to run for governor and seek re-election instead. Her campaign for Cuomo’s old job allowed him to claim she had a conflict of interest and shouldn’t be investigating him.
That issue is now moot, and James actually gave the governor some good advice Tuesday. Appearing on “The View,” she said, “He needs to take responsibility for his own personal conduct . . . and move on.”
That seems unlikely, if only because he has no place to go.